The Rover............................................................................................................................................................1

Joseph Conrad ..........................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I ............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ...........................................................................................................................................5

CHAPTER III.......................................................................................................................................11

CHAPTER IV.......................................................................................................................................17

CHAPTER V........................................................................................................................................23

CHAPTER VI.......................................................................................................................................28

CHAPTER VII ......................................................................................................................................34

CHAPTER VIII....................................................................................................................................44

CHAPTER IX.......................................................................................................................................54

CHAPTER X........................................................................................................................................62

CHAPTER XI.......................................................................................................................................71

CHAPTER XII ......................................................................................................................................79

CHAPTER XIII....................................................................................................................................85

CHAPTER XIV....................................................................................................................................89

CHAPTER XV...................................................................................................................................100

CHAPTER XVI..................................................................................................................................116

After entering at break of day the inner roadstead of the Port of Toulon, exchanging several loud hails with

one of the guardboats of the Fleet, which directed him where he was to take up his berth, MasterGunner

Peyrol let go the anchor of the seaworn and battered ship in his charge, between the arsenal and the town, in

full view of the principal quay. The course of his life, which in the opinion of any ordinary person might have

been regarded as full of marvellous incidents (only he himself had never marvelled at them), had rendered

him undemonstrative to such a degree that he did not even let out a sigh of relief at the rumble of the cable.

And yet it ended a most anxious six months of knocking about at sea with valuable merchandise in a

damaged hull, most of the time on short rations, always on the lookout for English cruisers, once or twice on

the verge of shipwreck and more than once on the verge of capture. But as to that, old Peyrol had made up his

mind from the first to blow up his valuable chargeunemotionally, for such was his character, formed

under the sun of the Indian Seas in lawless contests with his kind for a little loot that vanished as soon as

grasped, but mainly for bare life almost as precarious to hold through its ups and downs, and which now had

While his crew of halfstarved scarecrows, hard as nails and ravenous as so many wolves for the delights of

the shore, swarmed aloft to furl the sails nearly as thin and as patched as the grimy shirts on their backs,

Peyrol took a survey of the quay. Groups were forming along its whole stretch to gaze at the new arrival.

Peyrol noted particularly a good many men in red caps and said to himself``Here they are.'' Amongst the

crews of ships that had brought the tricolour into the seas of the East, there were hundreds professing

sansculotte principles; boastful and declamatory beggars he had thought them. But now he was beholding

the shore breed. Those who had made the Revolution safe. The real thing. Peyrol, after taking a good long

He shaved his big cheeks with a real English razor, looted years ago from an officer's cabin in an English

East Indiaman captured by a ship he was serving in then. He put on a white shirt, a short blue jacket with

metal buttons and a high rollcollar, a pair of white trousers which he fastened with a red bandana

handkerchief by way of a belt. With a black, shiny lowcrowned hat on his head he made a very creditable

prizemaster. He beckoned from the poop to a boatman and got himself rowed to the quay.

By that time the crowd had grown to a large size. Peyrol's eyes ranged over it with no great apparent interest,

though it was a fact that he had never in all his man's life seen so many idle white people massed together to

stare at a sailor. He had been a rover of the outer seas; he had grown into a stranger to his native country.

During the few minutes it took the boatman to row him to the step, he felt like a navigator about to land on a

On putting his foot on it he was mobbed. The arrival of a prize made by a squadron of the Republic in distant

seas was not an everyday occurrence in Toulon. The wildest rumours had been already set flying. Peyrol

elbowed himself through the crowd somehow, but it continued to move after him. A voice cried out, ``Where

do you come from, citoyen?'' ``From the other side of the world,'' Peyrol boomed out.

He did not get rid of his followers till the door of the Port Office. There he reported himself to the proper

officials as master of a prize taken off the Cape by Citoyen Renaud, CommanderinChief of the Republican

Squadron in the Indian Seas. He had been ordered to make for Dunkerque but, said he, having been chased by

the sacres Anglais three times in a fortnight between Cape Verde and Cape Spartel, he had made up his mind

to run into the Mediterranean where, he had understood from a Danish brig he had met at sea, there were no

English menofwar just then. And here he was; and there were his ship's papers and his own papers and

everything in order. He mentioned also that he was tired of rolling about the seas, and that he longed for a

period of repose on shore. But till all the legal business was settled he remained in Toulon roaming about the

streets at a deliberate gait, enjoying general consideration as Citizen Peyrol, and looking everybody coldly in

His reticence about his past was of that kind which starts a lot of mysterious stories about a man. No doubt

the maritime authorities of Toulon had a less cloudy idea of Peyrol's past, though it need not necessarily have

been more exact. In the various offices connected with the sea where his duties took him, the wretched

scribes, and even some of the chiefs, looked very hard at him as he went in and out, dressed very neatly, and

always with his cudgel, which he used to leave outside the door of private offices when called in for an

interview with one or another of the ``goldlaced lot.'' Having, however, cut off his queue and got in touch

with some prominent patriots of the Jacobin type, Peyrol cared little for people's stares and whispers. The

person that came nearest to trying his composure was a certain naval captain with a patch over one eye and a

very threadbare uniform coat who was doing some administrative work at the Port Office. That officer,

looking up from some papers, remarked brusquely, ``As a matter of fact you have been the best part of your

life skimming the seas, if the truth were known. You must have been a deserter from the Navy at one time,

``If there was anything of the sort it was in the time of kings and aristocrats,'' he said steadily. ``And now I

have brought in a prize, and a service letter from Citizen Renaud, commanding in the Indian Seas. I can also

give you the names of good republicans in this town who know my sentiments. Nobody can say I was ever

antirevolutionary in my life. I knocked about the Eastern seas for fortyfive years that's true. But let me

observe that it was the seamen who stayed at home that let the English into the Port of Toulon.'' He paused a

moment and then added: ``When one thinks of that, citoyen Commandant, any little slips I and fellows of my

kind may have made five thousand leagues from here and twenty years ago cannot have much importance in

``As to fraternity,'' remarked the postcaptain in the shabby coat, ``the only one you are familiar with is the

``Everybody in the Indian Ocean except milksops and youngsters had to be,'' said the untroubled Citizen

Peyrol. ``And we practised republican principles long before a republic was thought of; for the Brothers of

``They were an abominable lot of lawless ruffians,'' remarked the officer venomously, leaning back in his

Citizen Peyrol refused to take up a defensive attitude. He merely mentioned in a neutral tone that he had

delivered his trust to the Port Office all right, and as to his character he had a certificate of civism from his

section. He was a patriot and entitled to his discharge. After being dismissed by a nod he took up his cudgel

outside the door and walked out of the building with the calmness of rectitude. His large face of the Roman

type betrayed nothing to the wretched quilldrivers, who whispered on his passage. As he went along the

streets he looked as usual everybody in the eye; but that very same evening he vanished from Toulon. It

wasn't that he was afraid of anything. His mind was as calm as the natural set of his florid face. Nobody could

know what his forty years or more of sealife had been, unless he told them himself. And of that he didn't

mean to tell more than what he had told the inquisitive captain with the patch over one eye. But he didn't

want any bother for certain other reasons; and more than anything else he didn't want to be sent perhaps to

serve in the fleet now fitting out in Toulon. So at dusk he passed through the gate on the road to Frejus in a

high twowheeled cart belonging to a wellknown farmer whose habitation lay that way. His personal

belongings were brought down and piled up on the tailboard of the cart by some ragamuffin patriots whom he

engaged in the street for that purpose. The only indiscretion he committed was to pay them for their trouble

with a large handful of assignats. From such a prosperous seaman, however, this generosity was not so very

compromising. He himself got into the cart over the wheel, with such slow and ponderous movements, that

the friendly farmer felt called upon to remark: ``Ah, we are not so young as we used to beyou and

I.''``I have also an awkward wound,'' said Citizen Peyrol, sitting down heavily.

And so from farmer's cart to farmer's cart, getting lifts all along, jogging in a cloud of dust between stone

walls and through little villages well known to him from his boyhood's days, in a landscape of stony hills,

pale rocks, and dusty green of olive trees, Citizen Peyrol went on unmolested till he got down clumsily in the

yard of an inn on the outskirts of the town of Hyeres. The sun was setting to his right. Near a clump of dark

pines with bloodred trunks in the sunset, Peyrol perceived a rutty track branching off in the direction of the

At that spot Citizen Peyrol had made up his mind to leave the high road. Every feature of the country with the

darkly wooded rises, the barren flat expanse of stones and sombre bushes to his left, appealed to him with a

sort of strange familiarity, because they had remained unchanged since the days of his boyhood. The very

cartwheel tracks scored deep into the stony ground had kept their physiognomy; and far away, like a blue

thread, there was the sea of the Hyeres roadstead with a lumpy indigo swelling still beyondwhich was the

island of Porquerolles, but he really did not know. The notion of a father was absent from his mentality. What

he remembered of his parents was a tall, lean, brown woman in rags, who was his mother. But then they were

working together at a farm which was on the mainland. He had fragmentary memories of her shaking down

olives, picking stones out of a field, or handling a manure fork like a man, tireless and fierce, with wisps of

greyish hair flying about her bony face; and of himself running barefooted in connection with a flock of

turkeys, with hardly any clothes on his back. At night, by the farmer's favour, they were permitted to sleep in

a sort of ruinous byre built of stones and with only half a roof on it, lying side by side on some old straw on

the ground. And it was on a bundle of straw that his mother had tossed ill for two days and had died in the

night. In the darkness, her silence, her cold face had given him an awful scare. He supposed they had buried

her but he didn't know, because he had rushed out terrorstruck, and never stopped till he got as far as a little

place by the sea called Almanarre, where he hid himself on board a tartane that was lying there with no one

on board. He went into the hold because he was afraid of some dogs on shore. He found down there a heap of

empty sacks, which made a luxurious couch, and being exhausted went to sleep like a stone. Some time

during the night the crew came on board and the tartane sailed for Marseilles. That was another awful

scarebeing hauled out by the scruff of the neck on the deck and being asked who the devil he was and

what he was doing there. Only from that one he could not run away. There was water all around him and the

whole world, including the coast not very far away, wobbled in a most alarming manner. Three bearded men

stood about him and he tried to explain to them that he had been working at Peyrol's. Peyrol was the farmer's

name. The boy didn't know that he had one of his own. Moreover, he didn't know very well how to talk to

people, and they must have misunderstood him. Thus the name of Peyrol stuck to him for life.

There the memories of his native country stopped, overlaid by other memories, with a multitude of

impressions of endless oceans, of the Mozambique Channel, of Arabs and negroes, of Madagascar, of the

coast of India, of islands and channels and reefs; of fights at sea, rows on shore, desperate slaughter and

desperate thirst, of all sorts of ships one after another: merchant ships and frigates and privateers; of reckless

men and enormous sprees. In the course of years he had learned to speak intelligibly and think connectedly

and even to read and write after a fashion. The name of the farmer Peyrol, attached to his person on account

of his inability to give a clear account of himself, acquired a sort of reputation, both openly, in the ports of the

East and, secretly, amongst the Brothers of the Coast, that strange fraternity with something masonic and not

a little piratical in its constitution. Round the Cape of Storms, which is also the Cape of Good Hope, the

words Republic, Nation, Tyranny, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the cult of the Supreme Being came

floating on board ships from home, new cries and new ideas which did not upset the slowly developed

intelligence of the gunner Peyrol. They seemed the invention of landsmen, of whom the seaman Peyrol knew

very littlenothing, so to speak. Now, after nearly fifty years of lawful and lawless sealife, Citizen

Peyrol, at the yard gate of the roadside inn, looked at the late scene of his childhood. He looked at it without

any animosity, but a little puzzled as to his bearings amongst the features of the land. ``Yes, it must be

somewhere in that direction,'' he thought vaguely. Decidedly he would go no further along the high road. . . .

A few yards away the woman of the inn stood looking at him, impressed by the good clothes, the great

shaven cheeks, the welltodo air of that seaman; and suddenly Peyrol noticed her. With her anxious brown

face, her grey locks, and her rustic appearance she might have been his mother, as he remembered her, only

``He! La mere,'' hailed Peyrol. ``Have you got a man to lend a hand with my chest into the house?''

He looked so prosperous and so authoritative that she piped without hesitation in a thin voice, ``Mais oui,

In the dusk the clump of pines across the road looked very black against the quiet clear sky; and Citizen

Peyrol gazed at the scene of his young misery with the greatest possible placidity. Here he was after nearly

fifty years, and to look at things it seemed like yesterday. He felt for all this neither love nor resentment. He

felt a little funny as it were, and the funniest thing was the thought which crossed his mind that he could

indulge his fancy (if he had a mind to it) to buy up all this land to the furthermost field, away over there

where the track lost itself sinking into the flats bordering the sea where the small rise at the end of the Giens

``Tell me, my friend,'' he said in his magisterial way to the farmhand with a tousled head of hair who was

``Yes,'' said the labourer, and Peyrol nodded. The man continued, mouthing his words slowly as if unused to

speech. ``To Almanarre and further too, beyond the great pond right out to the end of the land, to Cape

Peyrol was lending his big flat hairy ear. ``If I had stayed in this country,'' he thought, ``I would be talking

``Why, a hamlet, a hole, just a few houses round a church and a farm where at one time they would give you

Citizen Peyrol stayed at the innyard gate till the night had swallowed up all those features of the land to

which his eyes had clung as long as the last gleams of daylight. And even after the last gleams had gone he

had remained for some time staring into the darkness in which all he could distinguish was the white road at

his feet and the black heads of pines where the cart track dipped towards the coast. He did not go indoors till

some carters who had been refreshing themselves had departed with their big twowheeled carts piled up

high with empty winecasks, in the direction of Frejus. The fact that they did not remain for the night pleased

Peyrol. He ate his bit of supper alone, in silence, and with a gravity which intimidated the old woman who

had aroused in him the memory of his mother. Having finished his pipe and obtained a bit of candle in a tin

candlestick, Citizen Peyrol went heavily upstairs to rejoin his luggage. The crazy staircase shook and

groaned under his feet as though he had been carrying a burden. The first thing he did was to close the

shutters most carefully as though he had been afraid of a breath of night air. Next he bolted the door of the

room. Then sitting on the floor, with the candlestick standing before him between his widely straddled legs,

he began to undress, flinging off his coat and dragging his shirt hastily over his head. The secret of his heavy

movements was disclosed then in the fact that he had been wearing next his bare skinlike a pious penitent

his hairshirta sort of waistcoat made of two thicknesses of old sailcloth and stitched all over in the

manner of a quilt with tarred twine. Three horn buttons closed it in front. He undid them, and after he had

slipped off the two shoulderstraps which prevented this strange garment from sagging down on his hips he

started rolling it up. Notwithstanding all his care there were during this operation several faint chinks of some

His bare torso thrown backwards and sustained by his rigid big arms heavily tattooed on the white skin above

the elbows, Peyrol drew a long breath into his broad chest with a pepperandsalt pelt down the breastbone.

And not only was the breast of Citizen Peyrol relieved to the fullest of its athletic capacity, but a change had

also come over his large physiognomy on which the expression of severe stolidity had been simply the result

of physical discomfort. It isn't a trifle to have to carry girt about your ribs and hung from your shoulders a

mass of mixed foreign coins equal to sixty or seventy thousand francs in hard cash; while as to the paper

money of the Republic, Peyrol had had already enough experience of it to estimate the equivalent in

cartloads. A thousand of them. Perhaps two thousand. Enough in any case to justify his flight of fancy, while

looking at the countryside in the light of the sunset, that what he had on him would buy all that soil from

which he had sprung: houses, woods, vines, olives, vegetable gardens, rocks and salt lagoonsin fact, the

whole landscape, including the animals in it. But Peyrol did not care for the land at all. He did not want to

own any part of the solid earth for which he had no love. All he wanted from it was a quiet nook, an obscure

That would have to be done pretty soon, he thought. One could not live for an indefinite number of days with

a treasure strapped round one's chest. Meantime, an utter stranger in his native country the landing on which

was perhaps the biggest adventure in his adventurous life, he threw his jacket over the rolledup waistcoat

and laid his head down on it after extinguishing the candle. The night was warm. The floor of the room

happened to be of planks, not of tiles. He was no stranger to that sort of couch. With his cudgel laid ready at

his hand Peyrol slept soundly till the noises and the voices about the house and on the road woke him up

shortly after sunrise. He threw open the, shutter, welcoming the morning light and the morning breeze in the

full enjoyment of idleness which, to a seaman of his kind, is inseparable from the fact of being on shore.

There was nothing to trouble his thoughts; and though his physiognomy was far from being vacant, it did not

It had been by the merest accident that he had discovered during the passage, in a secret recess within one of

the lockers of his prize, two bags of mixed coins: gold mohurs, Dutch ducats, Spanish pieces, English

guineas. After making that discovery he had suffered from no doubts whatever. Loot big or little was a

natural fact of his freebooter's life. And now when by the force of things he had become a mastergunner of

the Navy he was not going to give up his find to confounded landsmen, mere sharks, hungry quilldrivers,

who would put it in their own pockets. As to imparting the intelligence to his crew (all bad characters), he

was much too wise to do anything of the kind. They would not have been above cutting his throat. An old

fighting seadog, a Brother of the Coast, had more right to such plunder than anybody on earth. So at odd

times, while at sea, he had busied himself within the privacy of his cabin in constructing the ingenious canvas

waistcoat in which he could take his treasure ashore secretly. It was bulky, but his garments were of an ample

cut, and no wretched customsguard would dare to lay hands on a successful prizemaster going to the Port

Admiral's offices to make his report. The scheme had worked perfectly. He found, however, that this secret

garment, which was worth precisely its weight in gold, tried his endurance more than he had expected. It

wearied his body and even depressed his spirits somewhat. It made him less active and also less

communicative. It reminded him all the time that he must not get into trouble of any sort keep clear of

rows, of intimacies, of promiscuous jollities. This was one of the reasons why he had been anxious to get

away from the town. Once, however, his head was laid on his treasure he could sleep the sleep of the just.

Nevertheless in the morning he shrank from putting it on again. With a mixture of sailor's carelessness and of

oldstanding belief in his own luck he simply stuffed the precious waistcoat up the flue of the empty

fireplace. Then he dressed and had his breakfast. An hour later, mounted on a hired mule, he started down the

track as calmly as though setting out to explore the mysteries of a desert island.

His aim was the end of the peninsula which, advancing like a colossal jetty into the sea, divides the

picturesque roadstead of Hyeres from the headlands and curves of the coast forming the approaches of the

Port of Toulon. The path along which the surefooted mule took him (for Peyrol, once he had put its head the

right way, made no attempt at steering) descended rapidly to a plain of and aspect, with the white gleams of

the Salins in the distance, bounded by bluish hills of no great elevation. Soon all traces of human habitations

disappeared from before his roaming eyes. This part of his native country was more foreign to him than the

shores of the Mozambique Channel, the coral strands of India, the forests of Madagascar. Before long he

found himself on the neck of the Giens peninsula, impregnated with salt and containing a blue lagoon,

particularly blue, darker and even more still than the expanses of the sea to the right and left of it from which

it was separated by narrow strips of land not a hundred yards wide in places. The track ran indistinct,

presenting no wheelruts, and with patches of efflorescent salt as white as snow between the tufts of wiry

grass and the particularly deadlooking bushes. The whole neck of land was so low that it seemed to have no

more thickness than a sheet of paper laid on the sea. Citizen Peyrol saw on the level of his eye, as if from a

mere raft, sails of various craft, some white and some brown, while before him his native island of

Porquerolles rose dull and solid beyond a wide strip of water. The mule, which knew rather better than

Citizen Peyrol where it was going to, took him presently amongst the gentle rises at the end of the peninsula.

The slopes were covered with scanty grass; crooked boundary walls of dry stones ran across the fields, and

above them, here and there, peeped a low roof of red tiles shaded by the heads of delicate acacias. At a turn of

the ravine appeared a village with its few houses, mostly with their blind walls to the path, and, at first, no

living soul in sight. Three tall platanes, very ragged as to their bark and very poor as to foliage, stood in a

group in an open space; and Citizen Peyrol was cheered by the sight of a dog sleeping in the shade. The mule

swerved with great determination towards a massive stone trough under the village fountain. Peyrol, looking

round from the saddle while the mule drank, could see no signs of an inn. Then, examining the ground nearer

to him, he perceived a ragged man sitting on a stone. He had a broad leathern belt and his legs were bare to

the knee. He was contemplating the stranger on the mule with stony surprise. His dark nutbrown face

contrasted strongly with his grey shock of hair. At a sign from Peyrol he showed no reluctance and

The thought that if he had remained at home he would have probably looked like that man crossed unbidden

the mind of Peyrol. With that gravity from which he seldom departed he inquired if there were any

inhabitants besides himself in the village. Then, to Peyrol's surprise, that destitute idler smiled pleasantly and

There was enough of the peasantborn in Peyrol, still, to remark that he had seen no man, woman, or child,

or fourfooted beast for hours, and that he would hardly have thought that there was any land worth looking

after anywhere around. But the other insisted. Well, they were working on it all the same, at least those that

At the sound of the voices the dog got up with a strange air of being all backbone, and, approaching in dismal

Peyrol became interested when the man explained that his boat was on the salt pond, the large, deserted and

opaque sheet of water lying dead between the two great bays of the living sea. Peyrol wondered aloud why

The flies buzzed, the mule hung its head, moving its ears and flapping its thin tail languidly.

``I have a sort of hut down by the lagoon and a net or two,'' the man confessed, as it were. Peyrol, looking

Peyrol sat as serious as a judge. ``You haven't much to make a living of,'' he delivered himself at last.

``However! . . . Is there no inn, cafe, or some place where one could put up for a day? I have heard up inland

``I will show it to you,'' said the man, who then went back to where he had been sitting and picked up a large

empty basket before he led the way. His dog followed with his head and tail low, and then came Peyrol

dangling his heels against the sides of the intelligent mule, which seemed to know beforehand all that was

going to happen. At the corner where the houses ended there stood an old wooden cross stuck into a square

block of stone. The lonely boatman of the Lagoon of Pesquiers pointed in the direction of a branching path

where the rises terminating the peninsula sank into a shallow pass. There were leaning pines on the skyline,

and in the pass itself dull silvery green patches of olive orchards below a long yellow wall backed by dark

``I don't know. They will have plenty of room, that's certain. There are no travellers here. But as for a place of

refreshment, it used to be that. You have only got to walk in. If he isn't there, the mistress is sure to be there

to serve you. She belongs to the place. She was born on it. We know all about her.''

``What sort of woman is she?'' asked Citizen Peyrol, who was very favourably impressed by the aspect of the

``And the husband?'' asked Peyrol, who, looking down into the other's steady upward stare, detected a flicker

in the brown, slightly faded eyes. ``Why are you staring at me like this? I haven't got a black skin, have I?''

The other smiled, showing in the thick pepperandsalt growth on his face as sound a set of teeth as Citizen

Peyrol himself. There was in his bearing something embarrassed, but not unfriendly, and, he uttered a phrase

from which Peyrol discovered that the man before him, the lonely, hirsute, sunburnt and barelegged human

being at his stirrup, nourished patriotic suspicions as to his character. And this seemed to him outrageous. He

wanted to know in a severe voice whether he looked like a confounded landsman of any kind. He swore also

without, however, losing any of the dignity of expression inherent in his type of features and in the very

``For an aristocrat you don't look like one, but neither do you look like a farmer or a pedlar or a patriot. You

don't look like anything that has been seen here for years and years and years. You look like one, I dare

Astonishment kept Peyrol perfectly quiet on his mule. ``Do I dream?'' he asked himself mentally. ``You aren't

mad?'' he asked aloud. ``Do you know what you are talking about? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?''

``All the same,'' persisted the other innocently, ``it is much less than ten years ago since I saw one of them of

Instinctively Peyrol passed his hand over his face. What could there be in it? Peyrol could not remember ever

having seen a bishop in his life. The fellow stuck to his point, for he puckered his brow and murmured:

``Others too. . . . I remember perfectly. . . . It isn't so many years ago. Some of them skulk amongst the

The sun blazed on the boulders and stones and bushes in the perfect stillness of the air. The mule,

disregarding with republican austerity the neighbourhood of a stable within less than a hundred and twenty

yards, dropped its head, and even its ears, and dozed as if in the middle of a desert. The dog, apparently

changed into stone at his master's heels, seemed to be dozing too with his nose near the ground. Peyrol had

fallen into a deep meditation, and the boatman of the lagoon awaited the solution of his doubts without

eagerness and with something like a grin within his thick beard. Peyrol's face cleared. He had solved the

``Well, it can't be helped,'' he said. ``I learned to shave from the English. I suppose that's what's the matter.''

``One can't tell where they are all gone to,'' he murmured. ``Only three years ago they swarmed about this

coast in their big ships. You saw nothing but them, and they were fighting all round Toulon on land. Then in

a week or two, crac!nobody! Cleared out devil knows where. But perhaps you would know.''

``Oh, yes,'' said Peyrol, ``I know all about the English, don't you worry your head.''

``I am not troubling my head. It is for you to think about what's best to say when you speak with him up

``He can't be a better patriot than I am, for all my shaven face,'' said Peyrol. ``That would only seem strange

With an unexpected sigh the man sat down at the foot of the cross, and, immediately, his dog went off a little

``We are all savages here,'' said the forlorn fisherman from the lagoon. ``But the master up there is a real

patriot from the town. If you were ever to go to Toulon and ask people about him they would tell you. He

first became busy purveying the guillotine when they were purifying the town from all aristocrats. That was

even before the English came in. After the English got driven out there was more of that work than the

guillotine could do. They had to kill traitors in the streets, in cellars, in their beds. The corpses of men and

women were lying in heaps along the quays. There were a good many of his sort that got the name of drinkers

Peyrol nodded. ``That will do me all right,'' he said. And before he could pick up the reins and hit it with his

heels the mule, as though it had just waited for his words, started off along the path.

In less than five minutes Peyrol was dismounting in front of a low, long addition to a tall farmhouse with

very few windows, and flanked by walls of stones enclosing not only the yard but apparently a field or two

also. A gateway stood open to the left, but Peyrol dismounted at the door, through which he entered a bare

room, with rough whitewashed walls and a few wooden chairs and tables, which might have been a rustic

cafe. He tapped with his knuckles on the table. A young woman with a fichu round her neck and a striped

white and red skirt, with black hair and a red mouth, appeared in an inner doorway.

``Bonjour, citoyenne,'' said Peyrol. She was so startled by the unusual aspect of this stranger that she

answered him only by a murmured ``bonjour,'' but in a moment she came forward and waited expectantly.

The perfect oval of her face, the colour of her smooth cheeks, and the whiteness of her throat forced from the

``I am thirsty, of course,'' he said, ``but what I really want is to know whether I can stay here.''

The sound of a mule's hoofs outside caused Peyrol to start, but the woman arrested him.

``She is only going to the shed. She knows the way. As to what you said, the master will be here directly.

``To tell you the truth, citoyenne, it may be in a manner of speaking for ever.''

She smiled in a bright flash of teeth, without gaiety or any change in her restless eyes that roamed about the

``You are but little more than that now,'' said Peyrol, examining her with a feeling that was no longer surprise

``Are you a patriot?'' she asked, still surveying the invisible company in the room.

Peyrol, who had thought that he had ``done with all that damned nonsense,'' felt angry and also at a loss for

``All right. The man is here.'' Her eyes, which had steadied, began to wander again all round and about the

motionless Peyrol. She moved a step nearer to him and asked in a low confidential tone: ``Have you ever

Peyrol, who had seen fights, massacres on land and Sea, towns taken by assault by savage warriors, who had

killed men in attack and defence, found himself at first bereft of speech by this simple question, and next

``No. I have heard men boast of having done so. They were mostly braggarts with craven hearts. But what is

She was not listening to him, the edge of her white even teeth pressing her lower lip, her eyes never at rest.

Peyrol remembered suddenly the sansculotte the blooddrinker. Her husband. Was it possible? . . .

Well, perhaps it was possible. He could not tell. He felt his utter incompetence. As to catching her glance,

you might just as well have tried to catch a wild seabird with your hands. And altogether she was like a

seabirdnot to be grasped. But Peyrol knew how to be patient, with that patience that is so often a form

of courage. He was known for it. It had served him well in dangerous situations. Once it had positively saved

his life. Nothing but patience. He could well wait now. He waited. And suddenly as if tamed by his patience

this strange creature dropped her eyelids, advanced quite close to him and began to finger the lapel of his

coatsomething that a child might have done. Peyrol all but gasped with surprise, but he remained perfectly

still. He was disposed to hold his breath. He was touched by a soft indefinite emotion, and as her eyelids

remained lowered till her black lashes seemed to lie like a shadow on her pale cheek, there was no need for

him to force a smile. After the first moment he was not even surprised. It was merely the sudden movement,

``Yes. You may stay. I think we shall be friends. I'll tell you about the Revolution.''

At these words Peyrol, the man of violent deeds, felt something like a chill breath at the back of his head.

``It must be,'' she said and backed away from him swiftly, and without raising her eyes turned round and was

gone in a moment, so lightly that one would have thought her feet had not touched the ground. Peyrol, staring

at the open kitchen door, saw after a moment an elderly woman's head, with brown thin cheeks and tied up in

The affectation common to seamen of never being surprised at anything that sea or land can produce had

become in Peyrol a second nature. Having learned from childhood to suppress every sign of wonder before

all extraordinary sights and events, all strange people, all strange customs, and the most alarming phenomena

of nature (as manifested, for instance, in the violence of volcanoes or the fury of human beings), he had really

become indifferentor only perhaps utterly inexpressive. He had seen so much that was bizarre or

atrocious, and had heard so many astounding tales, that his usual mental reaction before a new experience

was generally formulated in the words, ``J'en ai vu bien d'autres.'' The last thing which had touched him with

the panic of the supernatural had been the death under a heap of rags of that gaunt, fierce woman, his mother;

and the last thing that had nearly overwhelmed him at the age of twelve with another kind of terror was the

riot of sound and the multitude of mankind on the quays in Marseilles, something perfectly inconceivable

from which he had instantly taken refuge behind a stack of wheat sacks after having been chased ashore from

the tartane. He had remained there quaking till a man in a cocked hat and with a sabre at his side (the boy had

never seen either such a hat or such a sabre in his life) had seized him by the arm close to the armpit and had

hauled him out from there; a man who might have been an ogre (only Peyrol had never heard of an ogre) but

at any rate in his own way was alarming and wonderful beyond anything he could have imaginedif the

faculty of imagination had been developed in him then. No doubt all this was enough to make one die of

fright, but that possibility never occurred to him. Neither did he go mad; but being only a child, he had

simply adapted himself, by means of passive acquiescence, to the new and inexplicable conditions of life in

something like twentyfour hours. After that initiation the rest of his existence, from flying fishes to whales

and on to black men and coral reefs, to decks running with blood, and thirst in open boats, was comparatively

plain sailing. By the time he had heard of a Revolution in France and of certain Immortal Principles causing

the death of many people, from the mouths of seamen and travellers and yearold gazettes coming out of

Europe, he was ready to appreciate contemporary history in his own particular way. Mutiny and throwing

officers overboard. He had seen that twice and he was on a different side each time. As to this upset, he took

no side. It was too fartoo bigalso not distinct enough. But he acquired the revolutionary jargon

quickly enough and used it on occasion, with secret contempt. What he had gone through, from a spell of

crazy love for a yellow girl to the experience of treachery from a bosom friend and shipmate (and both those

things Peyrol confessed to himself he could never hope to understand), with all the graduations of varied

experience of men and passions between, had put a drop of universal scorn, a wonderful sedative, into the

Therefore he not only showed no surprise but did not feel any when he beheld the master, in the right of his

wife, of the Escampobar Farm. The homeless Peyrol, sitting in the bare salle with a bottle of wine before him,

was in the act of raising the glass to his lips when the man entered, exorator in the sections, leader of

redcapped mobs, hunter of the cidevants and priests, purveyor of the guillotine, in short a blooddrinker.

And Citizen Peyrol, who had never been nearer than six thousand miles as the crow flies to the realities of the

Revolution, put down his glass and in his deep unemotional voice said: ``Salut.''

The other returned a much fainter ``Salut,'' staring at the stranger of whom he had heard already. His

almondshaped, soft eyes were noticeably shiny and so was to a certain extent the skin on his high but

rounded cheekbones, coloured red like a mask of which all the rest was but a mass of clipped chestnut hair

growing so thick and close around the lips as to hide altogether the design of the mouth which, for all Citizen

Peyrol knew, might have been of a quite ferocious character. A careworn forehead and a perpendicular nose

suggested a certain austerity proper to an ardent patriot. He held in his hand a long bright knife which he laid

down on one of the tables at once. He didn't seem more than thirty years old, a wellmade man of medium

height, with a lack of resolution in his bearing. Something like disillusion was suggested by the set of his

shoulders. The effect was subtle, but Peyrol became aware of it while he explained his case and finished the

tale by declaring that he was a seaman of the Republic and that he had always done his duty before the

The blooddrinker had listened profoundly. The high arches of his eyebrows gave him an astonished look.

``You may have! But you may all the same be corrupt. The seamen of the Republic were eaten up with

corruption paid for with the gold of the tyrants. Who would have guessed it? They all talked like patriots.

And yet the English entered the harbour and landed in the town without opposition. The armies of the

Republic drove them out, but treachery stalks in the land, it comes up out of the ground, it sits at our

hearthstones, lurks in the bosom of the representatives of the people, of our fathers, of our brothers. There

was a time when civic virtue flourished, but now it has got to hide its head. And I will tell you why: there has

not been enough killing. It seems as if there could never be enough of it. It's discouraging. Look what we

His voice died in his throat as though he had suddenly lost confidence in himself.

``Bring another glass, citoyen,'' said Peyrol, after a short pause, ``and let's drink together. We will drink to the

He waited till the other had returned, then poured out the wine, and after they had touched glasses and half

``But you see I have nothing to do with your politics. I was at the other side of the world, therefore you can't

suspect me of being a traitor. You showed no mercy, you other sansculottes, to the enemies of the Republic

at home, and I killed her enemies abroad, far away. You were cutting off heads without much compunction. .

The other most unexpectedly shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them very wide. ``Yes, yes,'' he

``Yes. And I knocked the enemies of the Republic on the head whenever I had them before me without

inquiring about the number. It seems to me that you and I ought to get on together.''

The master of Escampobar farmhouse murmured, however, that in times like these nothing could be taken as

proof positive. It behoved every patriot to nurse suspicion in his breast. No sign of impatience escaped

Peyrol. He was rewarded for his selfrestraint and the unshaken goodhumour with which he had conducted

the discussion by, carrying his point. Citizen Scevola Bron (for that appeared to be the name of the master of

the farm), an object of fear and dislike to the other inhabitants of the Giens peninsula, might have been

influenced by a wish to have some one with whom he could exchange a few words from time to time. No

villagers ever came up to the farm, or were likely to, unless perhaps in a body and animated with hostile

Citizen Scevola struck the table with his fist, but this manifestation of energy was very momentary.

``And that was the town of which by a decree not a stone upon another was to be left,'' he complained, much

``Most of it is still standing,'' Peyrol assured him calmly. ``I don't know whether it deserved the fate you say

was decreed for it. I was there for the last month or so and I know it contains some good patriots. I know

because I made friends with them all.'' Thereupon Peyrol mentioned a few names which the retired

sansculotte greeted with a bitter smile and an ominous silence, as though the bearers of them had been only

``Come along and I will show you the place where you will sleep,'' he said with a sigh, and Peyrol was only

too ready. They entered the kitchen together. Through the open back door a large square of sunshine fell on

the floor of stone flags. Outside one could see quite a mob of expectant chickens, while a yellow hen postured

on the very doorstep, darting her head right and left with affectation. All old woman holding a bowl full of

broken food put it down suddenly on a table and stared. The vastness and cleanliness of the place impressed

``You will eat with us here,'' said his guide, and passed without stopping into a narrow passage giving access

to a steep flight of stairs. Above the first landing a narrow spiral staircase led to the upper part of the

farmhouse; and when the sansculotte flung open the solid plank door at which it ended he disclosed to

Peyrol a large low room containing a fourposter bedstead piled up high with folded blankets and spare

``We could arrange this place for you,'' said the master, ``but I don't know what the mistress will have to say,''

Peyrol, struck by the peculiar expression of his face, turned his head and saw the girl standing in the

doorway. It was as though she had floated up after them, for not the slightest sound of rustle or footfall had

warned Peyrol of her presence. The pure complexion of her white cheeks was set off brilliantly by her coral

lips and the bands of ravenblack hair only partly covered by a muslin cap trimmed with lace. She made no

sign, uttered no sound, behaved exactly as if there had been nobody in the room; and Peyrol suddenly averted

In some way or other, however, the sansculotte seemed to have ascertained her mind, for he said in a final

``That's all right then,'' and there was a short silence, during which the woman shot her dark glances all round

the room again and again, while on her lips there was a halfsmile, not so much absentminded as totally

unmotived, which Peyrol observed with a side glance, but could not make anything of. She did not seem to

``You have a view of salt water on three sides of you,'' remarked Peyrol's future host.

The farmhouse was a tall building, and this large attic with its three windows commanded on one side the

view of Hyeres roadstead on the first plan, with further blue undulations of the coast as far as Frejus; and on

the other the vast semicircle of barren high hills, broken by the entrance to Toulon harbour guarded by forts

and batteries, and ending in Cape Cepet, a squat mountain, with sombre folds and a base of brown rocks, with

a white spot gleaming on the very summit of it, a cidevant shrine dedicated to Our Lady, and a cidevant

place of pilgrimage. The noonday glare seemed absorbed by the gemlike surface of the sea perfectly flawless

``It's like being in a lighthouse,'' said Peyrol. ``Not a bad place for a seaman to live in.'' The sight of the sails

dotted about cheered his heart. The people of landsmen with their houses and animals and activities did not

count. What made for him the life of any strange shore were the craft that belonged to it: canoes, catamarans,

ballahous, praus, lorchas, mere dugouts, or even rafts of tied logs with a bit of mat for a sail from which

naked brown men fished along stretches of white sand crushed under the tropical skyline, sinister in its glare

and with a thundercloud crouching on the horizon. But here he beheld a perfect serenity, nothing sombre on

the shore, nothing ominous in the sunshine. The sky rested lightly on the distant and vaporous outline of the

hills; and the immobility of all things seemed poised in the air like a gay mirage. On this tideless sea several

tartanes lay becalmed in the Petite Passe between Porquerolles and Cape Esterel, yet theirs was not the

stillness of death but of light slumber, the immobility of a smiling enchantment, of a Mediterranean fair day,

breathless sometimes but never without life. Whatever enchantment Peyrol had known in his wanderings it

had never been so remote from all thoughts of strife and death, so full of smiling security, making all his past

appear to him like a chain of lurid days and sultry nights. He thought he would never want to get away from

it, as though he had obscurely felt that his old rover's soul had been always rooted there. Yes, this was the

place for him; not because expediency dictated, but simply because his instinct of rest had found its home at

He turned away from the window and found himself face to face with the sansculotte, who had apparently

come up to him from behind, perhaps with the intention of tapping him on the shoulder, but who now turned

``Tell me, patron,'' said Peyrol, ``is there anywhere near this house a little dent in the shore with a bit of beach

Citizen Bron, suddenly subdued, told him that what he wanted was to be found a couple of hundred yards

down the hill from the house. The coast, of course, was full of indentations, but this was a perfect little pool.

And the Toulon blooddrinker's almondshaped eyes became strangely sombre as they gazed at the attentive

Peyrol. A perfect little pool, he repeated, opening from a cove that the English knew well. He paused. Peyrol

observed without much animosity but in a tone of conviction that it was very difficult to keep off the English

whenever there was a bit of salt water anywhere; but what could have brought English seamen to a spot like

``It was when their fleet first came here,'' said the patriot in a gloomy voice, ``and hung round the coast

before the antirevolutionary traitors let them into Toulon, sold the sacred soil of their country for a handful

of gold. Yes, in the days before the crime was consummated English officers used to land in that cove at

``What audacity!'' commented Peyrol, who was really surprised. ``But that's just like what they are.'' Still, it

The patriot flung one arm up in a strained gesture. ``I swore to its truth before the tribunal,'' he said. ``It was a

dark story,'' he cried shrilly, and paused. ``It cost her father his life,'' he said in a low voice . . . ``her mother

Peyrol walked away to the western window and looked towards Toulon. In the middle of the great sheet of

water within Cape Cicie a tall twodecker lay becalmed and the little dark dots on the water were her boats

trying to tow her head round the right way. Peyrol watched them for a moment, and then walked back to the

``Did you actually drag him from this house to the guillotine?'' he asked in his unemotional voice.

The patriot shook his head thoughtfully with downcast eyes. ``No, he came over to Toulon just before the

evacuation, this friend of the English . . . sailed over in a tartane he owned that is still lying here at the

Madrague. He had his wife with him. They came over to take home their daughter who was living then with

some skulking old nuns. The victorious Republicans were closing in and the slaves of tyranny had to fly.''

``Came to fetch their daughter,'' mused Peyrol. ``Strange, that guilty people should . . .''

The patriot looked up fiercely. ``It was justice,'' he said loudly. ``They were antirevolutionists, and if they

had never spoken to an Englishman in their life the atrocious crime was on their heads.''

``H'm, stayed too long for their daughter,'' muttered Peyrol. ``And so it was you who brought her home.''

``I did,'' said the patron. For a moment his eyes evaded Peyrol's investigating glance, but in a moment he

looked straight into his face. ``No lessons of base superstition could corrupt her soul,'' he declared with

Peyrol, very calm, gave him a hardly perceptible nod. ``Well,'' he said, ``all this won't prevent me sleeping

wery well in this room. I always thought I would like to live in a lighthouse when I got tired of roving about

the seas. This is as near a lighthouse lantern as can be. You will see me with all my little affairs tomorrow,''

There was in Peyrol a fund of selfcommand amounting to placidity. There were men living in the East who

had no doubt whatever that Peyrol was a calmly terrible man. And they would quote illustrative instances

which from their own point of view were simply admirable. But all Peyrol had ever done was to behave

rationally, as it seemed to him in all sorts of dangerous circumstances without ever being led astray by the

nature, or the cruelty, or the danger of any given situation. He adapted himself to the character of the event

and to the very spirit of it, with a profound responsive feeling of a particularly unsentimental kind. Sentiment

in itself was an artificiality of which he had never heard and if he had seen it in action would have appeared

to him too puzzling to make anything of. That sort of genuineness in acceptance made him a satisfactory

inmate of the Escampobar Farm. He duly turned up with all his cargo, as he called it, and was met at the door

of the farmhouse itself by the young woman with the pale face and wandering eyes. Nothing could hold her

attention for long amongst her familiar surroundings. Right and left and far away beyond you, she seemed to

be looking for something while you were talking to her, so that you doubted whether she could follow what

you said. But as a matter of fact she had all her wits about her. In the midst of this strange search for

something that was not there she had enough detachment to smile at Peyrol. Then, withdrawing into the

kitchen, she watched, as much as her restless eyes could watch anything, Peyrol's cargo and Peyrol himself

The most valuable part of Peyrol's cargo being strapped to his person, the first thing he did after being left

alone in that attic room which was like the lantern of a lighthouse was to relieve himself of the burden and lay

it on the foot of the bed. Then he sat down and leaning his elbow far on the table he contemplated it with a

feeling of complete relief. That plunder had never burdened his conscience. It had merely on occasion

oppressed his body; and if it had at all affected his spirits it was not by its secrecy but by its mere weight,

which was inconvenient, irritating, and towards the end of a day altogether insupportable. It made a

freelimbed, deepbreathing sailorman feel like a mere overloaded animal, thus extending whatever there

was of compassion in Peyrol's nature towards the fourfooted beasts that carry men's burdens on the earth.

The necessities of a lawless life had taught Peyrol to be ruthless, but he had never been cruel.

Sprawling in the chair, stripped to the waist, robust and greyhaired, his head with a Roman profile propped

up on a mighty and tattooed forearm, he remained at ease, with his eyes fixed on his treasure with an air of

meditation. Yet Peyrol was not meditating (as a superficial observer might have thought) on the best place of

concealment. It was not that he had not had a great experience of that sort of property which had always

melted so quickly through his fingers. What made him meditative was its character, not of a share of a

hardwon booty in toil, in risk, in danger, in privation, but of a piece of luck personally his own. He knew

what plunder was and how soon it went; but this lot had come to stay. He had it with him, away from the

haunts of his lifetime, as if in another world altogether. It couldn't be drunk away, gambled away, squandered

away in any sort of familiar circumstances, or even given away. In that room, raised a good many feet above

his revolutionized native land where he was more of a stranger than anywhere else in the world, in this roomy

garret full of light and as it were surrounded by the sea, in a great sense of peace and security, Peyrol didn't

see why he should bother his head about it so very much. It came to him that he had never really cared for

any plunder that fell into his hands. No, never for any. And to take particular care of this for which no one

would seek vengeance or attempt recovery would have been absurd. Peyrol got up and opened his big

sandalwood chest secured with an enormous padlock, part, too, of some old plunder gathered in a Chinese

town in the Gulf of Tonkin, in company of certain Brothers of the Coast, who having boarded at night a

Portuguese schooner and sent her crew adrift in a boat, had taken a cruise on their own account, years and

years and years ago. He was young then, very young, and the chest fell to his share because nobody else

would have anything to do with the cumbersome thing, and also for the reason that the metal of the curiously

wrought thick hoops that strengthened it was not gold but mere brass. He, in his innocence, had been rather

pleased with the article. He had carried it about with him into all sorts of places, and also he had left it behind

himonce for a whole year in a dark and noisome cavern on a certain part of the Madagascar coast. He had

left it with various native chiefs, with Arabs, with a gamblinghell keeper in Pondicherry, with his various

That was on the occasion when he had received a wound which laid him open and gushing like a slashed

wineskin. A sudden quarrel broke out in a company of Brothers over some matter of policy complicated by

personal jealousies, as to which he was as innocent as a babe unborn. He never knew who gave him the slash.

Another Brother, a chum of his, an English boy, had rushed in and hauled him out of the fray, and then he

had remembered nothing for days. Even now when he looked at the scar he could not understand why he had

not died. That occurrence, with the wound and the painful convalescence, was the first thing that sobered his

character somewhat. Many years afterwards, when in consequence of his altered views of mere lawlessness

he was serving as quartermaster on board the Hirondelle, a comparatively respectable privateer, he caught

sight of that chest again in Port Louis, of all places in the world, in a dark little den of a shop kept by a lone

Hindoo. The hour was late, the side street was empty, and so Peyrol went in there to claim his property, all

fair, a dollar in one hand and a pistol in the other, and was entreated abjectly to take it away. He carried off

the empty chest on his shoulder, and that same night the privateer went to sea; then only he found time to

ascertain that he had made no mistake, because, soon after he had got it first, he had, in grim wantonness,

scratched inside the lid, with the point of his knife, the rude outline of a skull and crossbones into which he

had rubbed afterwards a little Chinese vermilion. And there it was, the whole design, as fresh as ever.

In the garret full of light of the Escampobar farmhouse, the greyhaired Peyrol opened the chest, took all the

contents out of it, laying them neatly on the floor, and spread his treasurepockets downwards over

the bottom, which it filled exactly. Busy on his knees he repacked the chest. A jumper or two, a fine cloth

jacket, a remnant piece of Madapolam muslin, costly stuff for which he had no use in the worlda quantity

of fine white shirts. Nobody would dare to rummage in his chest, he thought, with the assurance of a man

who had been feared in his time. Then he rose, and looking round the room and stretching his powerful arms,

he ceased to think of the treasure, of the future and even of tomorrow, in the sudden conviction that he could

In a tiny bit of a lookingglass hung on the frame of the east window, Peyrol, handling the unwearable

English blade, was shaving himselffor the day was Sunday. The years of political changes ending with

the proclamation of Napoleon as Consul for life had not touched Peyrol except as to his strong thick head of

hair, which was nearly all white now. After putting the razor away carefully, Peyrol introduced his stockinged

feet into a pair of sabots of the very best quality and clattered downstairs. His brown cloth breeches were

untied at the knee and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his shoulders. That searover turned rustic was now

perfectly at home in that farm which, like a lighthouse, commanded the view of two roadsteads and of the

open sea. He passed through the kitchen. It was exactly as he had seen it first, sunlight on the floor, red

copper utensils shining on the walls, the table in the middle scrubbed snowy white; and it was only the old

woman, Aunt Catherine, who seemed to have acquired a sharper profile. The very hen manoeuvring her neck

pretentiously on the doorstep, might have been standing there for the last eight years. Peyrol shooed her

away, and going into the yard washed himself lavishly at the pump. When he returned from the yard he

looked so fresh and hale that old Catherine complimented him in a thin voice on his ``bonne mine.'' Manners

were changing, and she addressed him no longer as citoyen but as Monsieur Peyrol. He answered readily that

if her heart was free he was ready to lead her to the altar that very day. This was such an old joke that

Catherine took no notice of it whatever, but followed him with her eyes as he crossed the kitchen into the

salle, which was cool, with its tables and benches washed clean, and no living soul in it. Peyrol passed

through to the front of the house, leaving the outer door open. At the clatter of his clogs a young man sitting

outside on a bench turned his head and greeted him by a careless nod. His face was rather long, sunburnt and

smooth, with a slightly curved nose and a very wellshaped chin. He wore a dark blue naval jacket open on a

white shirt and a black neckerchief tied in a slipknot with long ends. White breeches and stockings and

black shoes with steel buckles completed his costume. A brasshilted sword in a black scabbard worn on a

crossbelt was lying on the ground at his feet. Peyrol, silverheaded and ruddy, sat down on the bench at

some little distance. The level piece of rocky ground in front of the house was not very extensive, falling

away to the sea in a declivity framed between the rises of two barren hills. The old rover and the young

seaman with their arms folded across their chests gazed into space, exchanging no words, like close intimates

or like distant strangers. Neither did they stir when the master of the Escampobar Farm appeared out of the

yard gate with a manure fork on his shoulder and started to cross the piece of level ground. His grimy hands,

his rolledup shirt sleeves, the fork over the shoulder, the whole of his workingday aspect had somehow an

air of being a manifestation; but the patriot dragged his dirty clogs lowspiritedly in the fresh light of the

young morning, in a way no real worker on the land would ever do at the end of a day of toil. Yet there were

no signs of debility about his person. His oval face with rounded cheekbones remained unwrinkled except at

the corners of his almondshaped, shiny, visionary's eyes, which had not changed since the day when old

Peyrol's gaze had met them for the first time. A few white hairs on his tousled head and in the thin beard

alone had marked the passage of years, and you would have had to look for them closely. Amongst the

unchangeable rocks at the extreme end of the Peninsula, time seemed to have stood still and idle while the

group of people poised at that southernmost point of France had gone about their ceaseless toil, winning

The master of the farm, staring straight before him, passed before the two men towards the door of the salle,

which Peyrol had left open. He leaned his fork against the wall before going in. The sound of a distant bell,

the bell of the village where years ago the returned rover had watered his mule and had listened to the talk of

the man with the dog, came up faint and abrupt in the great stillness of the upper space. The violent slamming

``Does that fellow never rest?'' asked the young man in a low indifferent voice which covered the delicate

``Not on Sunday anyhow,'' answered the rover in the same detached manner. ``What can you expect? The

church bell is like poison to him. That fellow, I verily believe, has been born a sansculotte. Every `decadi'

he puts on his best clothes, sticks a red cap on his head and wanders between the buildings like a lost soul in

``Yes. There is hardly a hamlet in France where there isn't a sansculotte or two. But some of them have

``This one won't change his skin, and as to his inside he never had anything in him that could be moved.

Aren't there some people that remember him in Toulon? It isn't such a long time ago. And yet . . .'' Peyrol

The officer nodded, and for a moment his face wore a troubled expression which did not escape the notice of

``Some time ago, when the priests began to come back to the parishes, he, that fellow''Peyrol jerked his

head in the direction of the salle door``would you believe it?started for the village with a sabre

hanging to his side and his red cap on his head. He made for the church door. What he wanted to do there I

don't know. It surely could not have been to say the proper kind of prayers. Well, the people were very much

elated about their reopened church, and as he went along some woman spied him out of a window and started

the alarm. `Eh, there! look! The jacobin, the sansculotte, the blooddrinker! Look at him.' Out rushed some

of them, and a man or two that were working in their home patches vaulted over the low walls. Pretty soon

there was a crowd, mostly women, each with the first thing she could snatch upstick, kitchen knife,

anything. A few men with spades and cudgels joined them by the watertrough. He didn't quite like that.

What could he do? He turned and bolted up the hill, like a hare. It takes some pluck to face a mob of angry

women. He ran along the cart track without looking behind him, and they after him, yelling: `A mort! A mort

le buveur de sang!' He had been a horror and an abomination to the people for years, what with one story and

another, and now they thought it was their chance. The priest over in the presbytery hears the noise, comes to

the door. One look was enough for him. He is a fellow of about forty but a wiry, longlegged beggar, and

agilewhat? He just tucked up his skirts and dashed out, taking short cuts over the walls and leaping from

boulder to boulder like a blessed goat. I was up in my room when the noise reached me there. I went to the

window and saw the chase in full cry after him. I was beginning to think the fool would fetch all those furies

along with him up here and that they would carry the house by boarding and do for the lot of us, when the

priest cut in just in the nick of time. He could have tripped Scevola as easy as anything, but he lets him pass

and stands in front of his parishioners with his arms extended. That did it. He saved the patron all right. What

he could say to quieten them I don't know, but these were early days and they were very fond of their new

priest. He could have turned them round his little finger. I had my head and shoulders out of the

windowit was interesting enough. They would have massacred all the accursed lot, as they used to call us

down thereand when I drew in, behold there was the patronne standing behind me looking on too. You

have been here often enough to know how she roams about the grounds and about the house, without a sound.

A leaf doesn't pose itself lighter on the ground than her feet do. Well, I suppose she didn't know that I was

upstairs, and came into the room just in her way of always looking for something that isn't there, and noticing

me with my head stuck out, naturally came up to see what I was looking at. Her face wasn't any paler than

usual, but she was clawing the dress over her chest with her ten fingerslike this. I was confounded.

Before I could find my tongue she just turned round and went out with no more sound than a shadow.''

When Peyrol ceased, the ringing of the church bell went on faintly and then stopped as abruptly as it had

``Talking about her shadow,'' said the young officer indolently, ``I know her shadow.''

Old Peyrol made a really pronounced movement. ``What do you mean?'' he asked. ``Where?''

``I have got only one window in the room where they put me to sleep last night and I stood at it looking out.

That's what I am here forto look out, am I not? I woke up suddenly, and being awake I went to the

``No, but you see them on the ground, pretty black too when the moon is full. It fell across this open space

``Does the old woman that lives in the kitchen roam, do the village women roam as far as this?'' asked the

officer composedly. ``You ought to know the habits of the people. It was a woman's shadow. The moon being

to the west, it glided slanting from that corner of the house and glided back again. I know her shadow when I

``The window being open I heard somebody snoring. It couldn't have been you, you are too high. Moreover,

from the snoring,'' he added grimly, ``it must have been somebody with a good conscience. Not like you, old

skimmer of the seas, because, you know, that's what you are, for all your gunner's warrant.'' He glanced out of

``She roams, that cannot be denied,'' murmured Peyrol, with an uneasiness which he did not attempt to

``Evidently. I know a shadow when I see it, and when I saw it, it did not frighten me, not a quarter as much as

the mere tale of it seems to have frightened you. However, that sansculotte friend of yours must be a hard

sleeper. Those purveyors of the guillotine all have a firstclass fireproof Republican conscience. I have seen

``But that's neither here nor there,'' went on the officer, ``except that it may be convenient for roaming

Peyrol, excited, lowered his voice forcibly. ``Lieutenant,'' he said, ``if I had not seen from the first what was

in your heart I would have contrived to get rid of you a long time ago in some way or other.''

The lieutenant glanced sideways again and Peyrol let his raised fist fall heavily on his thigh. ``I am old Peyrol

and this place, as lonely as a ship at sea, is like a ship to me and all in it are like shipmates. Never mind the

patron. What I want to know is whether you heard anything? Any sound at all? Murmur, footstep?'' A bitterly

``Not a fairy footstep. Could you hear the fall of a leafand with that terrorist cur trumpeting right above

my head? . . .'' Without unfolding his arms he turned towards Peyrol, who was looking at him anxiously. . . .

``You want to know, do you? Well, I will tell you what I heard and you can make the best of it. I heard the

sound of a stumble. It wasn't a fairy either that stubbed its toe. It was something in a heavy shoe. Then a stone

went rolling down the ravine in front of us interminably, then a silence as of death. I didn't see anything

moving. The way the moon was then, the ravine was in black shadow. And I didn't try to see.''

Peyrol, with his elbow on his knee, leaned his head in the palm of his hand. The officer repeated through his

Peyrol shook his head slightly. After having spoken, the young officer leaned back against the wall, but next

moment the report of a piece of ordnance reached them as it were from below, travelling around the rising

ground to the left in the form of a dull thud followed by a sighing sound that seemed to seek an issue amongst

``That's the English corvette which has been dodging in and out of Hyeres Roads for the last week,'' said the

young officer, picking up his sword hastily. He stood up and buckled the belt on, while Peyrol rose more

``She can't be where we saw her at anchor last night. That gun was near. She must have crossed over. There

has been enough wind for that at various times during the night. But what could she be firing at down there in

He strode off, followed by Peyrol. There was not a human being in sight about the farm and not a sound of

life except for the lowing of a cow coming faintly from behind a wall. Peyrol kept close behind the quickly

moving officer who followed the footpath marked faintly on the stony slope of the hill.

``You may be right. You haven't been a gunner for nothing. Not shotted, eh? Then a signal gun. But who to?

We have been observing that corvette now for days and we know she has no companion.''

He moved on, Peyrol following him on the awkward path without losing his wind and arguing in a steady

voice: ``She has no companion but she may have seen a friend at daylight this morning.''

``Bah!'' retorted the officer without checking his pace. ``You talk now like a child or else you take me for

one. How far could she have seen? What view could she have had at daylight if she was making her way to

the Petite Passe where she is now? Why, the islands would have masked for her twothirds of the sea and just

in the direction too where the English inshore squadron is hovering below the horizon. Funny blockade that!

You can't see a single English sail for days and days together, and then when you least expect them they

come down all in a crowd as if ready to eat us alive. No, no! There was no wind to bring her up a companion.

But tell me, gunner, you who boast of knowing the bark of every English piece, what sort of gun was it?''

``Well, then, it was fired as a recall for one of her boats somewhere out of sight along the shore. With a coast

like this, all points and bights, there would be nothing very extraordinary in that, would there?''

``No,'' said Peyrol, stepping out steadily. ``What is extraordinary is that she should have had a boat away at

``You are right there.'' The officer stopped suddenly. ``Yes, it is really remarkable, that she should have sent a

``There is something there worth investigating,'' continued the officer with animation.

``If it is a matter of a boat,'' Peyrol said without the slightest excitement, ``there can be nothing very deep in

it. What could there be? As likely as not they sent her inshore early in the morning with lines to try to catch

some fish for the captain's breakfast. Why do you open your eyes like this? Don't you know the English?

After uttering those words with a deliberation made venerable by his white hair, Peyrol made the gesture of

``Why hurry like this?'' argued Peyrol without moving. ``Those heavy clogs of mine are not adapted for

``Aren't they?'' burst out the officer. ``Well, then, if you are tired you can sit down and fan yourself with your

The path following the contour of the hill took a turn towards its seaface and very soon the lieutenant passed

out of sight with startling suddenness. Then his head reappeared for a moment, only his head, and that too

vanished suddenly. Peyrol remained perplexed. After gazing in the direction in which the officer had

disappeared, he looked down at the farm buildings, now below him but not at a very great distance. He could

see distinctly the pigeons walking on the roof ridges. Somebody was drawing water from the well in the

middle of the yard. The patron, no doubt; but that man, who at one time had the power to send so many

luckless persons to their death, did not count for old Peyrol. He had even ceased to be an offence to his sight

and a disturber of his feelings. By himself he was nothing. He had never been anything but a creature of the

universal bloodlust of the time. The very doubts about him had died out by now in old Peyrol's breast. The

fellow was so insignificant that had Peyrol in a moment of particular attention discovered that he cast no

shadow, he would not have been surprised. Below there he was reduced to the shape of a dwarf lugging a

bucket away from the well. But where was she? Peyrol asked himself, shading his eyes with his hand. He

knew that the patronne could not be very far away, because he had a sight of her during the morning; but that

was before he had learned she had taken to roaming at night. His growing uneasiness came suddenly to an

end when, turning his eyes away from the farm buildings, where obviously she was not, he saw her appear,

with nothing but the sky full of light at her back, coming down round the very turn of the path which had

Peyrol moved briskly towards her. He wasn't a man to lose time in idle wonder, and his sabots did not seem

to weigh heavy on his feet. The fermiere, whom the villagers down there spoke of as Arlette as though she

had been a little girl, but in a strange tone of shocked awe, walked with her head drooping and her feet (as

Peyrol used to say) touching the ground as lightly as falling leaves. The clatter of the clogs made her raise her

black, clear eyes that had been smitten on the very verge of womanhood by such sights of bloodshed and

terror, as to leave in her a fear of looking steadily in any direction for long, lest she should see coming

through the empty air some mutilated vision of the dead. Peyrol called it trying not to see something that was

not there; and this evasive yet frank mobility was so much a part of her being that the steadiness with which

she met his inquisitive glance surprised old Peyrol for a moment. He asked without beating about the bush:

She answered with something airy and provoking in her voice, which also struck Peyrol as a novelty: ``He

never stopped. He passed by as though he had not seen me''and then they both looked away from each

She did not expect that question. She hung her head and took a pleat of her skirt between her fingers,

``Why should I not,'' she murmured in a low shy note, as if she had two voices within her.

``Yes.'' Arlette gave Peyrol a queer, meaningless smile with which her eyes had nothing to do. ``Yes, she

often does. I have noticed that before. She lies there trembling under her blankets till I come back.''

``What drove you out last night?'' Peyrol tried to catch her eyes, but they eluded him in the usual way. And

``My heart,'' she said. For a moment Peyrol lost his tongue and even all power of motion. The fermiere

having lowered her eyelids, all her life seemed to have gone into her coral lips, vivid and without a quiver in

the perfection of their design, and Peyrol, giving up the conversation with an upward fling of his arm, hurried

up the path without looking behind him. But once round the turn of the path, he approached the lookout at an

easier gait. It was a piece of smooth ground below the summit of the hill. It had quite a pronounced slope, so

that a short and robust pine growing true out of the soil yet leaned well over the edge of the sheer drop of

some fifty feet or so. The first thing that Peyrol's eyes took in was the water of the Petite Passe with the

enormous shadow of the Porquerolles Island darkening more than half of its width at this still early hour. He

could not see the whole of it, but on the part his glance embraced there was no ship of any kind. The

lieutenant, leaning with his chest along the inclined pine, addressed him irritably.

Peyrol obeyed without a word and for the space of a minute or so presented the bizarre sight of a rather bulky

peasant with venerable white locks crawling on his hands and knees on a hillside for no visible reason. When

he got to the foot of the pine he raised himself on his knees. The lieutenant, flattened against the inclined

Peyrol in his kneeling position could see the ship now. She was less than a quarter of a mile from him up the

coast, almost within hailing effort of his powerful voice. His unaided eyes could follow the movements of the

men on board like dark dots about her decks. She had drifted so far within Cape Esterel that the low

projecting mass of it seemed to be in actual contact with her stern. Her unexpected nearness made Peyrol

draw a sharp breath through his teeth. The lieutenant murmured, still keeping the glass to his eye:

As Peyrol and the lieutenant had surmised from the report of the gun, the English ship which the evening

before was lying in Hyeres Roads had got under way after dark. The light airs had taken her as far as the

Petite Passe in the early part of the night, and then had abandoned her to the breathless moonlight in which,

bereft of all motion, she looked more like a white monument of stone dwarfed by the darkling masses of land

Her captain was a man of about forty, with cleanshaven, full cheeks and mobile thin lips which he had a

trick of compressing mysteriously before he spoke and sometimes also at the end of his speeches. He was

Directly he found that the calm had taken complete possession of the night and was going to last for hours,

Captain Vincent assumed his favourite attitude of leaning over the rail. It was then some time after midnight

and in the pervading stillness the moon, riding on a speckless sky, seemed to pour her enchantment on an

uninhabited planet. Captain Vincent did not mind the moon very much. Of course it made his ship visible

from both shores of the Petite Passe. But after nearly a year of constant service in command of the extreme

lookout ship of Admiral Nelson's blockading fleet he knew the emplacement of almost every gun of the shore

defences. Where the breeze had left him he was safe from the biggest gun of the few that were mounted on

Porquerolles. On the Giens side of the pass he knew for certain there was not even a popgun mounted

anywhere. His long familiarity with that part of the coast had imbued him with the belief that he knew the

habits of its population thoroughly. The gleams of light in their houses went out very early and Captain

Vincent felt convinced that they were all in their beds, including the gunners of the batteries who belonged to

the local militia. Their interest in the movements of H.M.'s twentytwo gun sloop Amelia a had grown stale

by custom. She never interfered with their private affairs, and allowed the small coasting craft to go to and fro

unmolested. They would have wondered if she had been more than two days away. Captain Vincent used to

For an hour or so Captain Vincent mused a bit on his real home, on matters of service and other unrelated

things, then getting into motion in a very wideawake manner, he superintended himself the dispatch of that

boat the existence of which had been acutely surmised by Lieutenant Real and was a matter of no doubt

whatever to old Peyrol. As to her mission, it had nothing to do with catching fish for the captain's breakfast. It

was the captain's own gig, a very fastpulling boat. She was already alongside with her crew in her when the

officer, who was going in charge, was beckoned to by the captain. He had a cutlass at his side and a brace of

pistols in his belt, and there was a businesslike air about him that showed he had been on such service before.

``This calm will last a good many hours,'' said the captain. ``In this tideless sea you are certain to find the ship

very much where she is now, but closer inshore. The attraction of the landyou know.''

``Yes. Well, she may be allowed to put her side against any of these rocks. There would be no more danger

than alongside a quay with a sea like this. Just look at the water in the pass, Mr. Bolt. Like the floor of a

ballroom. Pull close along shore when you return. I'll expect you back at dawn.''

Captain Vincent paused suddenly. A doubt crossed his mind as to the wisdom of this nocturnal expedition.

The hammerhead of the peninsula with its seaface invisible from both sides of the coast was an ideal spot

for a secret landing. Its lonely character appealed to his imagination, which in the first instance had been

The fact was that the week before, when the Amelia was cruising off the peninsula, Bolt, looking at the coast,

mentioned that he knew that part of it well; he had actually been ashore there a good many years ago, while

serving with Lord Howe's fleet. He described the nature of the path, the aspect of a little village on the

reverse slope, and had much to say about a certain farmhouse where he had been more than once, and had

This had aroused Captain Vincent's curiosity. He sent for Bolt and had a long conversation with him. He

listened with great interest to Bolt's storyhow one day a man was seen from the deck of the ship in which

Bolt was serving then, waving a white sheet or tablecloth amongst the rocks at the water's edge. It might

have been a trap; but, as the man seemed alone and the shore was within range of the ship's guns, a boat was

``And that, sir,'' Bolt pursued impressively, ``was, I verily believe, the very first communication that Lord

Howe had from the royalists in Toulon.'' Afterwards Bolt described to Captain Vincent the meetings of the

Toulon royalists with the officers of the fleet. From the back of the farm he, Bolt himself, had often watched

for hours the entrance of the Toulon harbour on the lookout for the boat bringing over the royalist emissaries.

Then he would make an agreed signal to the advanced squadron and some English officers would land on

their side and meet the Frenchmen at the farmhouse. It was as simple as that. The people of the farmhouse,

husband and wife, were welltodo, good class altogether, and staunch royalists. He had got to know them

Captain Vincent wondered whether the same people were still living there. Bolt could see no reason why they

shouldn't be. It wasn't more than ten years ago, and they were by no means an old couple. As far as he could

make out, the farm was their own property. He, Bolt, knew only very few French words at that time. It was

much later, after he had been made a prisoner and kept inland in France till the Peace of Amiens, that he had

picked up a smattering of the lingo. His captivity had done away with his feeble chance of promotion, he

Captain Vincent, in common with a good many officers of all ranks in Lord Nelson's fleet, had his misgivings

about the system of distant blockade from which the Admiral apparently would not depart. Yet one could not

blame Lord Nelson. Everybody in the fleet understood that what was in his mind was the destruction of the

enemy; and if the enemy was closely blockaded he would never come out to be destroyed. On the other hand

it was clear that as things were conducted the French had too many chances left them to slip out unobserved

and vanish from all human knowledge for months. Those possibilities were a constant worry to Captain

Vincent, who had thrown himself with the ardour of passion into the special duty with which he was

entrusted. Oh, for a pair of eyes fastened night and day on the entrance of the harbour of Toulon! Oh, for the

power to look at the very state of French ships and into the very secrets of French minds!

But he said nothing of this to Bolt. He only observed that the character of the French Government was

changed and that the minds of the royalist people in the farmhouse might have changed too, since they had

got back the exercise of their religion. Bolt's answer was that he had had a lot to do with royalists, in his time,

on board Lord Howe's fleet, both before and after Toulon was evacuated. All sorts, men and women, barbers

and noblemen, sailors and tradesmen; almost every kind of royalist one could think of; and his opinion was

that a royalist never changed. As to the place itself, he only wished the captain had seen it. It was the sort of

spot that nothing could change. He made bold to say that it would be just the same a hundred years hence.

The earnestness of his officer caused Captain Vincent to look hard at him. He was a man of about his own

age, but while Vincent was a comparatively young captain, Bolt was an old master's mate. Each understood

the other perfectly. Captain Vincent fidgeted for a while and then observed abstractedly that he was not a man

This cryptic pronouncement caused no wonder to appear in Bolt's attentive gaze. He only became a little

thoughtful before he said in the same abstracted tone that an officer in uniform was not likely to be hanged

for a spy. The service was risky, of course. It was necessary, for its success, that, assuming the same people

were there, it should be undertaken by a man well known to the inhabitants. Then he added that he was

certain of being recognized. And while he enlarged on the extremely good terms he had been on with the

owners of the farm, especially the farmer's wife, a comely motherly woman, who had been very kind to him,

and had all her wits about her, Captain Vincent, looking at the master's mate's bushy whiskers, thought that

these in themselves were enough to insure recognition. This impression was so strong that he asked

pointblank: ``You haven't altered the growth of the hair on your face, Mr. Bolt, since then?''

There was just a touch of indignation in Bolt's negative reply; for he was proud of his whiskers. He declared

he was ready to take the most desperate chances for the service of his king and his country.

Captain Vincent added: ``For the sake of Lord Nelson, too.'' One understood well what his Lordship wished

to bring about by that blockade at sixty leagues off. He was talking to a sailor, and there was no need to say

any more. Did Bolt think that he could persuade those people to conceal him in their house on that lonely

shore end of the peninsula for some considerable time? Bolt thought it was the easiest thing in the world. He

would simply go up there and renew the old acquaintance, but he did not mean to do that in a reckless

manner. It would have to be done at night, when of course there would be no one about. He would land just

where he used to before, wrapped up in a Mediterranean sailor's cloak he had one of his ownover his

uniform, and simply go straight to the door, at which he would knock. Ten to one the farmer himself would

come down to open it. He knew enough French by now, he hoped, to persuade those people to conceal him in

some room having a view in the right direction; and there he would stick day after day on the watch, taking a

little exercise in the middle of the night, ready to live on mere bread and water if necessary, so as not to

arouse suspicion amongst the farmhands. And who knows if, with the farmer's help, he could not get some

news of what was going on actually within the port. Then from time to time he could go down in the dead of

night, signal to the ship and make his report. Bolt expressed the hope that the Amelia would remain as much

as possible in sight of the coast. It would cheer him up to see her about. Captain Vincent naturally assented.

He pointed out to Bolt, however, that his post would become most important exactly when the ship had been

chased away or driven by the weather off her station, as could very easily happen.``You would be then

the eyes of Lord Nelson's fleet, Mr. Boltthink of that. The actual eyes of Lord Nelson's fleet!''

After dispatching his officer, Captain Vincent spent the night on deck. The break of day came at last, much

paler than the moonlight which it replaced. And still no boat. And again Captain Vincent asked himself if he

had not acted indiscreetly. Impenetrable, and looking as fresh as if he had just come up on deck, he argued

the point with himself till the rising sun clearing the ridge on Porquerolles Island flashed its level rays upon

his ship with her dewdarkened sails and dripping rigging. He roused himself then to tell his first lieutenant

to get the boats out to tow the ship away from the shore. The report of the gun he ordered to be fired

expressed simply his irritation. The Amelia, pointing towards the middle of the Passe, was moving at a snail's

pace behind her string of boats. Minutes passed. And then suddenly Captain Vincent perceived his boat

pulling back in shore according to orders. When nearly abreast of the ship, she darted away, making for her

side. Mr. Bolt clambered on board, alone, ordering the gig to go ahead and help with the towing. Captain

Vincent, standing apart on the quarterdeck, received him with a grimly questioning look.

Mr. Bolt's first words were to the effect that he believed the confounded spot to be bewitched. Then he

glanced at the group of officers on the other side of the quarterdeck. Captain Vincent led the way to his

cabin. There he turned and looked at his officer, who, with an air of distraction, mumbled: ``There are

``Come, Bolt, what the devil have you seen? Did you get near the house at all?''

``I got within twenty yards of the door, sir,'' said Bolt. And encouraged by the captain's much less

ferocious``Well?'' began his tale. He did not pull up to the path which he knew, but to a little bit of beach

on which he told his men to haul up the boat and wait for him. The beach was concealed by a thick growth of

bushes on the landward side and by some rocks from the sea. Then he went to what he called the ravine, still

avoiding the path, so that as a matter of fact he made his way up on his hands and knees mostly, very

carefully and slowly amongst the loose stones, till by holding on to a bush he brought his eyes on a level with

The familiar aspect of the buildings, totally unchanged from the time when he had played his part in what

appeared as a most successful operation at the beginning of the war, inspired Bolt with great confidence in

the success of his present enterprise, vague as it was, but the great charm of which lay, no doubt, in mental

associations with his younger years. Nothing seemed easier than to stride across the forty yards of open

ground and rouse the farmer whom he remembered so well, the welltodo man, a grave sagacious royalist

in his humble way; certainly, in Bolt's view, no traitor to his country, and preserving so well his dignity in

ambiguous circumstances. To Bolt's simple vision neither that, man nor his wife could have changed.

In this view of Arlette's parents Bolt was influenced by the consciousness of there having been no change in

himself. He was the same Jack Bolt, and everything around him was the same as if he had left the spot only

yesterday. Already he saw himself in the kitchen which he knew so well, seated by the light of a single candle

before a glass of wine and talking his best French to that worthy farmer of sound principles. The whole thing

was as well as done. He imagined himself a secret inmate of that building, closely confined indeed, but

sustained by the possible great results of his watchfulness, in many ways more comfortable than on board the

Amelia and with the glorious consciousness that he was, in Captain Vincent's phrase, the actual physical eyes

He didn't, of course, talk of his private feelings to Captain Vincent. All those thoughts and emotions were

compressed in the space of not much more than a minute or two while, holding on with one hand to his bush

and having got a good foothold for one of his feet, he indulged in that pleasant anticipatory sense of success.

In the old days the farmer's wife used to be a light sleeper. The farmhands who, he remembered, lived in the

village or were distributed in stables and outhouses, did not give him any concern. He wouldn't need to knock

heavily. He pictured to himself the farmer's wife sitting up in bed, listening, then rousing her husband, who,

as likely as not, would take the gun standing against the dresser downstairs and come to the door.

And then everything would be all right. . . . But perhaps . . . Yes! It was just as likely the farmer would

simply open the window and hold a parley. That really was most likely. Naturally. In his place Bolt felt he

would do that very thing. Yes, that was what a man in a lonely house, in the middle of the night, would do

most naturally. And he imagined himself whispering mysteriously his answers up the wall to the obvious

questionsAmiBoltOuvrezmoi vive le roior things of that sort. And in sequence to those

vivid images it occurred to Bolt that the best thing he could do would be to throw small stones against the

window shutter, the sort of sound most likely to rouse a light sleeper. He wasn't quite sure which window on

the floor above the ground floor was that of those people's bedroom, but there were anyhow only three of

them. In a moment he would have sprung up from his foothold on to the level if, raising his eyes for another

look at the front of the house, he had not perceived that one of the windows was already open. How he could

He confessed to Captain Vincent in the course of his narrative that ``this open window, sir, checked me dead.

In fact, sir, it shook my confidence, for you know, sir, that no native of these parts would dream of sleeping

with his window open. It struck me that there was something wrong there; and I remained where I was.''

That fascination of repose, of secretive friendliness, which houses present at night, was gone. By the power of

an open window, a black square in the moonlighted wall, the farmhouse took on the aspect of a mantrap.

Bolt assured Captain Vincent that the window would not have stopped him; he would have gone on all the

same, though with an uncertain mind. But while he was thinking it out, there glided without a sound before

his irresolute eyes from somewhere a white visiona woman. He could see her black hair flowing down

her back. A woman whom anybody would have been excused for taking for a ghost. ``I won't say that she

froze my blood, sir, but she made me cold all over for a moment. Lots of people have seen ghosts, at least

they say so, and I have an open mind about that. She was a weird thing to look at in the moonlight. She did

not act like a sleepwalker either. If she had not come out of a grave, then she had jumped out of bed. But

when she stole back and hid herself round the corner of the house I knew she was not a ghost. She could not

have seen me. There she stood in the black shadow watching for somethingor waiting for somebody,''

One thing was clear to him: there had been changes in that farmhouse since his time. Bolt resented them, as if

that time had been only last week. The woman concealed round the corner remained in his full view,

watchful, as if only waiting for him to show himself in the open, to run off screeching and rouse all the

countryside. Bolt came quickly to the conclusion that he must withdraw from the slope. On lowering himself

from his first position he had the misfortune to dislodge a stone. This circumstance precipitated his retreat. In

a very few minutes he found himself by the shore. He paused to listen. Above him, up the ravine and all

round amongst the rocks, everything was perfectly still. He walked along in the direction of his boat. There

``Yes, Mr. Bolt, I fear we shall have to give up our plan,'' interrupted Captain Vincent at that point. Bolt's

assent came reluctantly, and then he braced himself to confess that this was not the worst. Before the

astonished face of Captain Vincent he hastened to blurt it out. He was very sorry, he could in no way account

Captain Vincent seemed unable to believe his ears. ``What do you say? Lost a man out of my boat's crew!''

He was profoundly shocked. Bolt was correspondingly distressed. He narrated that, shortly after he had left

them, the seamen had heard, or imagined they had heard, some faint and peculiar noises somewhere within

the cove. The coxswain sent one of the men, the oldest of the boat's crew, along the shore to ascertain

whether their boat hauled on the beach could be seen from the other side of the cove. The manit was

Symonsdeparted crawling on his hands and knees to make the circuit and, well he had not returned.

This was really the reason why the boat was so late in getting back to the ship. Of course Bolt did not like to

give up the man. It was inconceivable that Symons should have deserted. He had left his cutlass behind and

was completely unarmed, but had he been suddenly pounced upon he surely would have been able to let out a

yell that could have been heard all over the cove. But till daybreak a profound stillness, in which it seemed a

whisper could have been heard for miles, had reigned over the coast. It was as if Symons had been spirited

away by some supernatural means, without a scuffle, without a cry. For it was inconceivable that he should

have ventured inland and got captured there. It was equally inconceivable that there should have been on that

particular night men ready to pounce upon Symons and knock him on the head so neatly as not to let him

Captain Vincent said: ``All this is very fantastical, Mr. Bolt,'' and compressed his lips firmly for a moment

before he continued: ``But not much more than your woman. I suppose you did see something real. . . .''

``I tell you, sir, she stood there in full moonlight for ten minutes within a stone's throw of me,'' protested Bolt

with a sort of desperation. ``She seemed to have jumped out of bed only to look at the house. If she had a

petticoat over her nightshift, that was all. Her back was to me. When she moved away I could not make out

``So there must have been somebody about,'' concluded Captain Vincent with assurance.

Bolt murmured a reluctant, ``Must have been.'' He had expected to get into enormous trouble over this affair

and was much relieved by the captain's quiet attitude. ``I hope, sir, you approve of my conduct in not

``I was afraid of spoiling our chances to carry out your plan, sir, by disclosing our presence on shore. And

that could not have been avoided. Moreover, we were only five in all and not properly armed.''

``The plan has gone down before your nightwalker, Mr. Bolt,'' Captain Vincent declared dryly. ``But we

must try to find out what has become of our man if it can be done without risking too much.''

``By landing a large party this very next night we could surround the house,'' Bolt suggested. ``If we find

friends there, well and good. If enemies, then we could carry off some of them on board for exchange

perhaps. I am almost sorry I did not go back and kidnap that wenchwhoever she was,'' he added

``No doubt there was a man not very far off,'' said Captain Vincent equably. ``That will do, Mr. Bolt. You

Bolt was glad to obey, for he was tired and hungry after his dismal failure. What vexed him most was its

absurdity. Captain Vincent, though he too had passed a sleepless night, felt too restless to remain below. He

By that time the Amelia had been towed half a mile or so away from Cape Esterel. This change had brought

her nearer to the two watchers on the hillside, who would have been plainly visible to the people on her deck,

but for the head of the pine which concealed their movements. Lieutenant Real, bestriding the rugged trunk as

high as he could get, had the whole of the English ship's deck open to the range of his pocketglass which he

Peyrol, sitting at the foot of the tree, made no answer for a long while. A warm drowsiness lay over the land

and seemed to press down his eyelids. But inwardly the old rover was intensely awake. Under the mask of his

immobility, with halfshut eyes and idly clasped hands, he heard the lieutenant, perched up there near the

head of the tree, mutter counting something: ``One, two, three,'' and then a loud ``Parbleu!'' after which the

lieutenant in his trunkbestriding attitude began to jerk himself backwards. Peyrol got up out of his way, but

``I will tell you what's the matter,'' said the other excitedly. As soon as he got his footing he walked up to old

``The first thing I did was to count the boats in the water. There was not a single one left on board. And now I

just counted them again and found one more there. That ship had a boat out last night. How I missed seeing

her pull out from under the land I don't know. I was watching the decks, I suppose, and she seems to have

gone straight up to the towrope. But I was right. That Englishman had a boat out.''

He seized Peyrol by both shoulders suddenly. ``I believe you knew it all the time. You knew it, I tell you.''

Peyrol, shaken violently by the shoulders, raised his eyes to look at the angry face within a few inches of his

own. In his worn gaze there was no fear or shame, but a troubled perplexity and obvious concern. He

The lieutenant suddenly desisted with a final jerk which failed to stagger old Peyrol, who, directly he had

``For the ground is slippery here. If I had lost my footing I would not have been able to prevent myself from

grabbing at you, and we would have gone down that cliff together; which would have told those Englishmen

Secretly Lieutenant Real was daunted by Peyrol's mildness. It could not be shaken. Even physically he had an

impression of the utter futility of his effort, as though he had tried to shake a rock. He threw himself on the

Peyrol lowered himself with a deliberation appropriate to his grey hairs. ``You don't suppose that out of a

hundred and twenty or so pairs of eyes on board that ship there wouldn't be a dozen at least scanning the

shore. Two men falling down a cliff would have been a startling sight. The English would have been

interested enough to send a boat ashore to go through our pockets, and whether dead or only half dead we

wouldn't have been in a state to prevent them. It wouldn't matter so much as to me, and I don't know what

papers you may have in your pockets, but there are your shoulderstraps, your uniform coat.''

``I carry no papers in my pocket, and . . .'' A sudden thought seemed to strike the lieutenant, a thought so

intense and farfetched as to give his mental effort a momentary aspect of vacancy. He shook it off and went

on in a changed tone: ``The shoulderstraps would not have been much of a revelation by themselves.''

``No. Not much. But enough to let her captain know that he had been watched. For what else could the dead

body of a naval officer with a spyglass in his pocket mean? Hundreds of eyes may glance carelessly at that

ship every day from all parts of the coast, though I fancy those landsmen hardly take the trouble to look at her

now. But that's a very different thing from being kept under observation. However I don't suppose all this

The lieutenant was recovering from the spell of that sudden thought. ``Papers in my pocket,'' he muttered to

himself. ``That would be a perfect way.'' His parted lips came together in a slightly sarcastic smile with which

he met Peyrol's puzzled, sidelong glance provoked by the inexplicable character of these words.

``I bet,'' said the lieutenant, ``that ever since I came here first you have been more or less worrying your old

Peyrol said simply: ``You came here on service at first and afterwards you came again because even in the

Toulon fleet an officer may get a few days' leave. As to your intentions, I won't say anything about them.

Especially as regards myself. About ten minutes ago anybody looking on would have thought they were not

The lieutenant sat up suddenly. By that time the English sloop, getting away from under the land, had become

Peyrol, startled, raised his eyes and saw the Amelia clear of the edge of the cliff and heading across the Passe.

All her boats were already alongside, and yet, as a minute or two of steady gazing was enough to convince

``She moves! There is no denying that. She moves. Watch the white speck of that house on Porquerolles.

There! The end of her jibboom touches it now. In a moment her head sails will mask it to us.''

``I would never have believed it,'' muttered the lieutenant, after a pause of intent gazing. ``And look, Peyrol,

Peyrol, who had been shading his eyes from the sun, let his hand fall. ``Yes,'' he said, ``she would answer to a

child's breath quicker than a feather, and the English very soon found it out when they got her. She was

``Aha, lieutenant,'' said Peyrol, pressing his finger to his breast, ``it hurts here, doesn't it? There is nobody but

good Frenchmen here. Do you think it is a pleasure to me to watch that flag out there at her peak? Look, you

can see the whole of her now. Look at her ensign hanging down as if there were not a breath of wind under

the heavens. . . .'' He stamped his foot suddenly. ``And yet she moves! Those in Toulon that may be thinking

of catching her dead or alive would have to think hard and make long plans and get good men to carry them

The rover shook his head. ``They need not have sent you on the duty,'' he said. ``I have been watching her

now for a month, her and the man who has got her now. I know all his tricks and all his habits and all his

dodges by this time. The man is a seaman, that must be said for him, but I can tell beforehand what he will do

Lieutenant Real lay down on his back again, his clasped hands under his head. He thought that this old man

was not boasting. He knew a lot about the English ship, and if an attempt to capture her was to be made, his

ideas would be worth having. Nevertheless, in his relations with old Peyrol Lieutenant Real suffered from

contradictory feelings. Real was the son of a cidevant couplesmall provincial gentry who had both

lost their heads on the scaffold, within the same week. As to their boy, he was apprenticed by order of the

Delegate of the Revolutionary Committee of his town to a poor but pureminded joiner, who could not

provide him with shoes to run his errands in, but treated this aristocrat not unkindly. Nevertheless, at the end

of the year the orphan ran away and volunteered as a boy on board one of the ships of the Republic about to

sail on a distant expedition. At sea he found another standard of values. In the course of some eight years,

suppressing his faculties of love and hatred, he arrived at the rank of an officer by sheer merit, and had

accustomed himself to look at men sceptically, without much scorn or much respect. His principles were

purely professional and he had never formed a friendship in his lifemore unfortunate in that respect than

old Peyrol, who at least had known the bonds of the lawless Brotherhood of the Coast. He was, of course,

very selfcontained. Peyrol, whom he had found unexpectedly settled on the peninsula, was the first human

being to break through that schooled reserve which the precariousness of all things had forced on the orphan

of the Revolution. Peyrol's striking personality had aroused Real's interest, a mistrustful liking mixed with

some contempt of a purely doctrinaire kind. It was clear that the fellow had been next thing to a pirate at one

time or another a sort of past which could not commend itself to a naval officer.

Still, Peyrol had broken through: and, presently, the peculiarities of all those people at the farm, each

Lieutenant Real, on his back, closing his eyes to the glare of the sky, meditated on old Peyrol, while Peyrol

himself, with his white head bare in the sunshine, seemed to be sitting by the side of a corpse. What in that

man impressed Lieutenant Real was the faculty of shrewd insight. The facts of Real's connection with the

farmhouse on the peninsula were much as Peyrol had stated. First on specific duty about establishing a signal

station, then, when that project had been given up, voluntary visits. Not belonging to any ship of the fleet but

doing shore duty at the Arsenal, Lieutenant Real had spent several periods of short leave at the farm, where

indeed nobody could tell whether he had come on duty or on leave. He personally could notor perhaps

would nottell even to himself why it was that he came there. He had been growing sick of his work. He

had no place in the world to go to, and no one either. Was it Peyrol he was coming to see? A mute, strangely

suspicious, defiant understanding had established itself imperceptibly between him and that lawless old man

who might have been suspected to have come there only to die, if the whole robust personality of Peyrol with

its quiet vitality had not been antagonistic to the notion of death. That rover behaved as though he had all the

Peyrol spoke suddenly, with his eyes fixed in front of him as if he were addressing the Island of Porquerolles,

``YesI know all her moves, though I must say that this trick of dodging close to our peninsula is

``H'm! Fish for the captain's breakfast,'' mumbled Real without opening his eyes. ``Where is she now?''

``In the middle of the Passe, busy hoisting in her boats. And still moving! That ship will keep her way as long

This was the last sound for a long time. Then the lieutenant said in an indifferent tone: ``You are very

``I have been looking at her for a month, whatever name she might have had or whatever name the English

The lieutenant remained silent, as though he had lost all interest and there had been no such thing as an

English manofwar within a mile. But all the time he was thinking hard. He had been told confidentially of

a certain piece of service to be performed on instructions received from Paris. Not an operation of war, but

service of the greatest importance. The risk of it was not so much deadly as particularly odious. A brave man

might well have shrunk from it; and there are risks (not death) from which a resolute man might shrink

``Have you ever tasted of prison, Peyrol?'' he asked suddenly, in an affectedly sleepy voice.

It roused Peyrol nearly into a shout. ``Heavens! No! Prison! What do you mean by prison? . . . I have been a

captive to savages,'' he added, calming down, ``but that's a very old story. I was young and foolish then.

Later, when a grown man, I was a slave to the famous AliKassim. I spent a fortnight with chains on my legs

and arms in the yard of a mud fort on the shores of the Persian Gulf. There was nearly a score of us Brothers

``Yes. . . . The lieutenant was very languid indeed. . . . And I daresay you all took service with that

``There was not a single one of his thousands of blackamoors that could lay a gun properly. But AliKassim

made war like a prince. We sailed, a regular fleet, across the gulf, took a town on the coast of Arabia

somewhere, and looted it. Then I and the others managed to get hold of an armed dhow, and we fought our

way right through the blackamoors' fleet. Several of us died of thirst later. All the same, it was a great affair.

But don't you talk to me of prisons. A proper man if given a chance to fight can always get himself killed.

``Yes, I understand you,'' drawled the lieutenant. ``I think I know you pretty well. I suppose an English prison

``That is a horrible subject of conversation,'' interrupted Peyrol in a loud, emotional tone. ``Naturally, any

death is better than a prison. Any death! What is it you have in your mind, lieutenant?''

``Oh, it isn't that I want you to die,'' drawled Real in an uninterested manner.

Peyrol, his entwined fingers clasping his legs, gazed fixedly at the English sloop floating idly in the Passe

while he gave up all his mind to the consideration of these words that had floated out, idly too, into the peace

The lieutenant laughed harshly. Neither by word, gesture nor glance did Peyrol acknowledge the enigmatic

and unpleasant sound. But when it ceased the silence grew so oppressive between the two men that they got

up by a common impulse. The lieutenant sprang to his feet lightly. The uprising of Peyrol took more time and

had more dignity. They stood side by side unable to detach their longing eyes from the enemy ship below

``I wonder,'' growled Peyrol curtly. ``If there had been only a couple of eighteenpounders placed on the

rocky ledge to the left of us, we could have unrigged her in about ten minutes.''

``Good old gunner,'' commented Real ironically. ``And what afterwards? Swim off, you and I, with our

This sally provoked in Peyrol an austere smile. ``No! No!'' he protested soberly. ``But why not let Toulon

know? Bring out a frigate or two and catch him alive. Many a time have I planned his capture just to ease my

heart. Often I have stared at night out of my window upstairs across the bay to where I knew he was lying at

anchor, and thinking of a little surprise I could arrange for him if I were not only old Peyrol, the gunner.''

``Yes. And keeping out of the way at that, with a bad note against his name in the books of the Admiralty in

``You can't say I have tried to hide myself from you who are a naval officer,'' struck in Peyrol quickly. ``I fear

no man. I did not run. I simply went away from Toulon. Nobody had given me an order to stay there. And

``Here you go again, hinting at something crooked like that fellow with big epaulettes at the Port Office that

seemed to be longing to put me under arrest just because I brought a prize from the Indian Ocean, eight

thousand miles, dodging clear of every Englishmen that came in my way, which was more perhaps than he

could have done. I have my gunner's warrant signed by Citizen Renaud, a chef d'escadre. It wasn't given me

for twirling my thumbs or hiding in the cable tier when the enemy was about. There were on board our ships

some patriots that weren't above doing that sort of thing, I can tell you. But republic or no republic, that kind

``That's all right,'' said Real, with his eyes fixed on the English ship, the head of which was swung to the

northward now. . . . ``Look, she seems to have lost her way at last,'' he remarked parenthetically to Peyrol,

who also glanced that way and nodded. . . . ``That's all right. But it's on record that you managed in a very

short time to get very thick with a lot of patriots ashore. Section leaders. Terrorists. . . .''

``Why, yes. I wanted to hear what they had to say. They talked like a drunken crew of scallywags that had

stolen a ship. But at any rate it wasn't such as they that had sold the Port to the English. They were a lot of

bloodthirsty landlubbers. I did get out of town as soon as I could. I remembered I was born around here. I

knew no other bit of France, and I didn't care to go any further. Nobody came to look for me.''

``No, not here. I suppose they thought it was too near. They did look for you, a little, but they gave it up.

Perhaps if they had persevered and made an admiral of you we would not have been beaten at Aboukir.''

At the mention of that name Peyrol shook his fist at the serene Mediterranean sky. ``And yet we were no

worse men than the English,'' he cried, ``and there are no such ships as ours in the world. You see, lieutenant,

the republican god of these talkers would never give us seamen a chance of fair play.''

The lieutenant looked round in surprise. ``What do you know about a republican god?'' he asked. ``What on

``I have heard of and seen more gods than you could ever dream of in a long night's sleep, in every corner of

the earth, in the very heart of forests, which is an inconceivable thing. Figures, stones, sticks. There must be

something in the idea. . . . And what I meant,'' he continued in a resentful tone, ``is that their republican god,

which is neither stick nor stone, but seems to be some kind of lubber, has never given us seamen a chief like

Lieutenant Real looked at Peyrol with unsmiling attention, then remarked quietly, ``Well, the god of the

aristocrats is coming back again and it looks as if he were bringing an emperor along with him. You've heard

``No,'' said Peyrol. ``I have heard no talk of an emperor. But what does it matter? Under one name or another

a chief can be no more than a chief, and that general whom they have been calling consul is a good

After saying those words in a dogmatic tone, Peyrol looked up at the sun and suggested that it was time to go

down to the farmhouse ``pour manger la soupe.'' With a suddenly gloomy face Real moved off, followed by

Peyrol. At the first turn of the path they got the view of the Escampobar buildings with the pigeons still

walking on the ridges of the roofs, of the sunny orchards and yards without a living soul in them. Peyrol

remarked that everybody no doubt was in the kitchen waiting for his and the lieutenant's return. He himself

The lieutenant was not hungry. Hearing this declaration made in a peevish tone, Peyrol gave a sagacious

movement of his head behind the lieutenant's back. Well, whatever happened, a man had to eat. He, Peyrol,

knew what it was to be altogether without food; but even halfrations was a poor show, very poor show for

anybody who had to work or to fight. For himself he couldn't imagine any conjuncture that would prevent

His unwonted garrulity provoked no response, but Peyrol continued to talk in that strain as though his

thoughts were concentrated on food, while his eyes roved here and there and his ears were open for the

slightest sound. When they arrived in front of the house Peyrol stopped to glance anxiously down the path to

the coast, letting the lieutenant enter the cafe. The Mediterranean, in that part which could be seen from the

door of the cafe, was as empty of all sail as a yet undiscovered sea. The dull tinkle of a cracked bell on the

neck of some wandering cow was the only sound that reached him, accentuating the Sunday peace of the

farm. Two goats were lying down on the western slope of the hill. It all had a very reassuring effect and the

anxious expression on Peyrol's face was passing away when suddenly one of the goats leaped to its feet. The

rover gave a start and became rigid in a pose of tense apprehension. A man who is in such a frame of mind

that a leaping goat makes him start cannot be happy. However, the other goat remained lying down. There

was really no reason for alarm, and Peyrol, composing his features as near as possible to their usual placid

A single cover having been laid at the end of a long table in the salle for the lieutenant, he had his meal there

while the others sat down to theirs in the kitchen, the usual strangely assorted company served by the anxious

and silent Catherine. Peyrol, thoughtful and hungry, faced Citizen Scevola in his working clothes and very

much withdrawn within himself. Scevola's aspect was more feverish than usual, with the red patches on his

cheekbones very marked above the thick beard. From time to time the mistress of the farm would get up from

her place by the side of old Peyrol and go out into the salle to attend to the lieutenant. The other three people

seemed unconscious of her absences. Towards the end of the meal Peyrol leaned back in his wooden chair

and let his gaze rest on the exterrorist who had not finished yet, and was still busy over his plate with the air

of a man who had done a long morning's work. The door leading from the kitchen to the salle stood wide

Till lately Peyrol had not concerned himself very much with the mental states of the people with whom he

lived. Now, however, he wondered to himself what could be the thoughts of the exterrorist patriot, that

sanguinary and extremely poor creature occupying the position of master of the Escampobar Farm. But when

Citizen Scevola raised his head at last to take a long drink of wine there was nothing new on that face which

``Sacrebleu!'' exclaimed Peyrol at last. ``If you never say anything to anybody like this you will forget how to

The patriot smiled from the depths of his beard, a smile which Peyrol for some reason, mere prejudice

perhaps, always thought resembled the defensive grin of some small wild animal afraid of being cornered.

``What is there to talk about?'' he retorted. ``You live with us; you haven't budged from here; I suppose you

have counted the bunches of grapes in the enclosure and the figs on the figtree on the west wall many times

over. . . .'' He paused to lend an ear to the dead silence in the salle, and then said with a slight rise of tone,

Peyrol wrinkled the corners of his eyes in a keen, searching glance. Catherine clearing the table bore herself

as if she had been completely deaf. Her face, of a walnut colour, with sunken cheeks and lips, might have

been a carving in the marvellous immobility of its fine wrinkles. Her carriage was upright and her hands swift

in their movements. Peyrol said: ``We don't want to talk about the farm. Haven't you heard any news lately?''

The patriot shook his head violently. Of public news he had a horror. Everything was lost. The country was

ruled by perjurers and renegades. All the patriotic virtues were dead. He struck the table with his fist and then

remained listening as though the blow could have roused an echo in the silent house. Not the faintest sound

came from anywhere. Citizen Scevola sighed. It seemed to him that he was the only patriot left, and even in

``I know,'' said Peyrol. ``I saw the whole affair out of the window. You can run like a hare, citizen.''

``Was I to allow myself to be sacrificed by those superstitious brutes?'' argued Citizen Scevola in a

highpitched voice and with genuine indignation which Peyrol watched coldly. He could hardly catch the

mutter of ``Perhaps it would have been just as well if I had let those reactionary dogs kill me that time.''

The old woman washing up at the sink glanced uneasily towards the door of the salle.

``No!'' shouted the lonely sansculotte. ``It isn't possible! There must be plenty of patriots left in France. The

For a short time he presented the appearance of a man who is sitting with ashes on his head and desolation in

his heart. His almondshaped eyes looked dull, extinguished. But after a moment he gave a sidelong look at

Peyrol as if to watch the effect and began declaiming in a low voice and apparently as if rehearsing a speech

to himself: ``No, it isn't possible. Some day tyranny will stumble and then it will be time to pull it down

Those words, and even the passionate energy of the tone, left Peyrol unmoved. With his head sustained by his

thick brown hand he was thinking of something else so obviously as to depress again the feebly struggling

spirit of terrorism in the lonely breast of Citizen Scevola. The glow of reflected sunlight in the kitchen

became darkened by the body of the fisherman of the lagoon, mumbling a shy greeting to the company from

the frame of the doorway. Without altering his position Peyrol turned his eyes on him curiously. Catherine,

wiping her hands on her apron, remarked: ``You come late for your dinner, Michel.'' He stepped in then, took

from the old woman's hand an earthenware pot and a large hunk of bread and carried them out at once into

the yard. Peyrol and the sansculotte got up from the table. The latter, after hesitating like somebody who has

lost his way, went brusquely into the passage, while Peyrol, avoiding Catherine's anxious stare, made for the

backyard. Through the open door of the salle he obtained a glimpse of Arlette sitting upright with her hands

in her lap gazing at somebody he could not see, but who could be no other than Lieutenant Real.

In the blaze and heat of the yard the chickens, broken up into small groups, were having their siesta in

patches of shade. But Peyrol cared nothing for the sun. Michel, who was eating his dinner under the pent roof

of the cart shed, put the earthenware pot down on the ground and joined his master at the well encircled by a

low wall of stones and topped by an arch of wrought iron on which a wild figtree had twined a slender

offshoot. After his dog's death the fisherman had abandoned the salt lagoon, leaving his rotting punt exposed

on the dismal shore and his miserable nets shut up in the dark hut. He did not care for another dog, and

besides, who was there to give him a dog? He was the last of men. Somebody must be last. There was no

place for him in the life of the village. So one fine morning he had walked up to the farm in order to see

Peyrol. More correctly, perhaps, to let himself be seen by Peyrol. That was exactly Michel's only hope. He sat

down on a stone outside the gate with a small bundle, consisting mainly of an old blanket, and a crooked stick

lying on the ground near him, and looking the most lonely, mild and harmless creature on this earth. Peyrol

had listened gravely to his confused tale of the dog's death. He, personally, would not have made a friend of a

dog like Michel's dog, but he understood perfectly the sudden breaking up of the establishment on the shore

of the lagoon. So when Michel had concluded with the words, ``I thought I would come up here,'' Peyrol,

without waiting for a plain request, had said: ``Tres bien. You will be my crew,'' and had pointed down the

path leading to the seashore. And as Michel, picking up his bundle and stick, started off, waiting for no

further directions, he had shouted after him: ``You will find a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine in a locker

These had been the only formalities of Michel's engagement to serve as ``crew'' on board Peyrol's boat. The

rover indeed had tried without loss of time to carry out his purpose of getting something of his own that

would float. It was not so easy to find anything worthy. The miserable population of Madrague, a tiny fishing

hamlet facing towards Toulon, had nothing to sell. Moreover, Peyrol looked with contempt on all their

possessions. He would have as soon bought a catamaran of three logs of wood tied together with rattans as

one of their boats; but lonely and prominent on the beach, lying on her side in weatherbeaten melancholy,

there was a twomasted tartane with her sunwhitened cordage hanging in festoons and her dry masts

showing long cracks. No man was ever seen dozing under the shade of her hull on which the Mediterranean

gulls made themselves very much at home. She looked a wreck thrown high up on the land by a disdainful

sea. Peyrol, having surveyed her from a distance, saw that the rudder still hung in its place. He ran his eye

along her body and said to himself that a craft with such lines would sail well. She was much bigger than

anything he had thought of, but in her size, too, there was a fascination. It seemed to bring all the shores of

the Mediterranean within his reach, Baleares and Corsica, Barbary and Spain. Peyrol had sailed over

hundreds of leagues of ocean in craft that were no bigger. At his back in silent wonder a knot of fishermen's

wives, bareheaded and lean, with a swarm of ragged children clinging to their skirts, watched the first

Peyrol borrowed a short ladder in the hamlet (he knew better than to trust his weight to any of the ropes

hanging over the side) and carried it down to the beach followed at a respectful distance by the staring

women and children: a phenomenon and a wonder to the natives, as it had happened to him before on more

than one island in distant seas. He clambered on board the neglected tartane and stood on the decked forepart,

the centre of all eyes. A gull flew away with an angry scream. The bottom of the open hold contained nothing

but a little sand, a few broken pieces of wood, a rusty hook, and some few stalks of straw which the wind

must have carried for miles before they found their rest in there. The decked afterpart had a small skylight

and a companion, and Peyrol's eyes rested fascinated on an enormous padlock which secured its sliding door.

It was as if there had been secrets or treasures inside and yet most probably it was empty. Peyrol turned

his head away and with the whole strength of his lungs shouted in the direction of the fishermen's wives who

had been joined by two very old men and a hunchbacked cripple swinging between two crutches:

At first the only answer was a movement of recoil. Only the hunchback held his ground and shouted back in

The wives of the fishermen admired his boldness, for Peyrol indeed appeared to them a very formidable

``I might have guessed that,'' thought Peyrol. ``She is in a dreadful mess.'' The disturbed gull had brought

some friends as indignant as itself and they circled at different levels uttering wild cries over Peyrol's head.

The being on crutches lifted a finger towards the circling birds and answered in a deep tone:

``They are the only ones I know.'' Then, as Peyrol gazed down at him over the side, he went on: ``This craft

used to belong to Escampobar. You know Escampobar ? It's a house in the hollow between the hills there.''

``Yes, I know Escampobar,'' yelled Peyrol, turning away and leaning against the mast in a pose which he did

not change for a long time. His immobility tired out the crowd. They moved slowly in a body towards their

hovels, the hunchback bringing up the rear with long swings between his crutches, and Peyrol remained alone

with the angry gulls. He lingered on board the tragic craft which had taken Arlette's parents to their death in

the vengeful massacre of Toulon and had brought the youthful Arlette and Citizen Scevola back to

Escampobar where old Catherine, left alone at that time, had waited for days for somebody's return. Days of

anguish and prayer, while she listened to the booming of guns about Toulon and with an almost greater but

Peyrol, enjoying the sensation of some sort of craft under his feet, indulged in no images of horror connected

with that desolate tartane. It was late in the evening before he returned to the farm, so that he had to have his

supper alone. The women had retired, only the sansculotte, smoking a short pipe out of doors, had followed

him into the kitchen and asked where he had been and whether he had lost his way. This question gave Peyrol

an opening. He had been to Madrague and had seen a very fine tartane lying perishing on the beach.

``What's the matter? Isn't she the craft you came here in? Won't you sell her to me?'' Peyrol waited a little.

It appeared that the patriot had no positive objections. He mumbled something about the tartane being very

``I will be frank with you, citoyen. You see, when she lay at the quay in Toulon a lot of fugitive traitors, men

and women, and children too, swarmed on board of her, and cut the ropes with a view of escaping, but the

avengers were not far behind and made short work of them. When we discovered her behind the Arsenal, I

and another man, we had to throw a lot of bodies overboard, out of the hold and the cabin. You will find her

very dirty all over. We had no time to clear up.'' Peyrol felt inclined to laugh. He had seen decks swimming in

blood and had himself helped to throw dead bodies overboard after a fight; but he eyed the citizen with an

unfriendly eye. He thought to himself: ``He had a hand in that massacre, no doubt,'' but he made no audible

remark. He only thought of the enormous padlock securing that emptied charnel house at the stern. The

terrorist insisted. ``We really had not a moment to clean her up. The circumstances were such that it was

necessary for me to get away quickly lest some of the false patriots should do me some carmagnole or other.

There had been bitter quarrelling in my section. I was not alone in getting away, you know.''

Peyrol waved his arm to cut short the explanation. But before he and the terrorist had parted for the night

Next day he returned to the hamlet and took up his quarters there for a time. The awe he had inspired wore

off, though no one cared to come very near the tartane. Peyrol did not want any help. He wrenched off the

enormous padlock himself with a bar of iron and let the light of day into the little cabin which did indeed bear

the trace's of the massacre in the stains of blood on its woodwork, but contained nothing else except a wisp of

long hair and a woman's earring, a cheap thing which Peyrol picked up and looked at for a long time. The

associations of such finds were not foreign to his past. He could without very strong emotion figure to

himself the little place choked with corpses. He sat down and looked about at the stains and splashes which

had been untouched by sunlight for years. The cheap little earring lay before him on the roughhewn table

between the lockers, and he shook his head at it weightily. He, at any rate, had never been a butcher.

Peyrol unassisted did all the cleaning. Then he turned con amore to the fitting out of the tartane. The habits of

activity still clung to him. He welcomed something to do; this congenial task had all the air of preparation for

a voyage, which was a pleasing dream, and it brought every evening the satisfaction of something achieved to

that illusory end. He rove new gear, scraped the masts himself, did all the sweeping, scrubbing and painting

singlehanded, working steadily and hopefully as though he had been preparing his escape from a desert

island; and directly he had cleaned and renovated the dark little hole of a cabin he took to sleeping on board.

Once only he went up on a visit to the farm for a couple of days, as if to give himself a holiday. He passed

them mostly in observing Arlette. She was perhaps the first problematic human being he had ever been in

contact with. Peyrol had no contempt for women. He had seen them love, suffer, endure, riot, and even fight

for their own hand, very much like men. Generally with men and women you had to be on your guard, but in

some ways women were more to be trusted. As a matter of fact, his countrywomen were to him less known

than any other kind. From his experience of many different races, however, he had a vague idea that women

were very much alike everywhere. This one was a lovable creature. She produced on him the effect of a child,

aroused a kind of intimate emotion which he had not known before to exist by itself in a man. He was startled

by its detached character. ``Is it that I am getting old?'' he asked himself suddenly one evening, as he sat on

the bench against the wall looking straight before him, after she had crossed his line of sight.

He felt himself an object of observation to Catherine, whom he used to detect peeping at him round corners

or through halfopened doors. On his part he would stare at her openlyaware of the impression he

produced on her: mingled curiosity and awe. He had the idea she did not disapprove of his presence at the

farm, where, it was plain to him, she had a far from easy life. This had no relation to the fact that she did all

the household work. She was a woman of about his own age, straight as a dart but with a wrinkled face. One

evening as they were sitting alone in the kitchen Peyrol said to her: ``You must have been a handsome girl in

She turned to him under the high mantel of the fireplace and seemed struck all of a heap, unbelieving,

amazed, so that Peyrol was quite provoked. ``What's the matter? If the old moke in the yard had spoken you

She recovered from her scare to say: ``I was born here, grew up here, and early in my life I made up my mind

``It's not a thing to talk about,'' said the old woman, stooping to get a pot out of the warm ashes. ``I did not

think, then,'' she went on, with her back to Peyrol, ``that I would live long. When I was eighteen I fell in love

``That was the time when I prayed for death,'' she pursued in a quiet voice. ``I spent nights on my knees

upstairs in that room where you sleep now. I shunned everybody. People began to say I was crazy. We have

always been hated by the rabble about here. They have poisonous tongues. I got the nickname of `la fiancee

du pretre.' Yes, I was handsome, but who would have looked at me if I had wanted to be looked at? My only

luck was to have a fine man for a brother. He understood. No word passed his lips, but sometimes when we

were alone and not even his wife was by, he would lay his hand on my shoulder gently. From that time to this

I have not been to church and I never will go. But I have no quarrel with God now.''

There were no signs of watchfulness and care in her bearing now. She stood straight as an arrow before

Peyrol and looked at him with a confident air. The rover was not yet ready to speak. He only nodded twice

and Catherine turned away to put the pot to cool in the sink. ``Yes, I wished to die. But I did not, and now I

have got something to do,'' she said, sitting down near the fireplace and taking her chin in her hand. ``And I

``Well! bonsoir,'' he said. ``I am off to Madrague. I want to begin work again on the tartane at daylight.''

``Don't talk to me about the tartane, She took my brother away for ever. I stood on the shore watching her

Moving calmly her faded lips which no lover or child had ever kissed, old Catherine told Peyrol of the days

and nights of waiting, with the distant growl of the big guns in her ears. She used to sit outside on the bench

longing for news, watching the flickers in the sky and listening to heavy bursts of gunfire coming over the

water. Then came a night as if the world were coming to an end. All the sky was lighted up, the earth shook

to its foundations, and she felt the house rock, so that jumping up from the bench she screamed with fear.

That night she never went to bed. Next morning she saw the sea covered with sails, while a black and yellow

cloud of smoke hung over Toulon. A man coming up from Madrague told her that he believed that the whole

town had been blown up. She gave him a bottle of wine and he helped her to feed the stock that evening.

Before going home he expressed the opinion that there could not be a soul left alive in Toulon, because the

few that survived would have gone away in the English ships. Nearly a week later she was dozing by the fire

when voices outside woke her up, and she beheld standing in the middle of the salle, pale like a corpse out of

a grave, with a bloodsoaked blanket over her shoulders and a red cap on her head, a ghastly looking young

girl in whom she suddenly recognized her niece. She screamed in her terror: ``Francois, Francois!'' This was

her brother's name, and she thought he was outside. Her scream scared the girl, who ran out of the door. All

was still outside. Once more she screamed ``Francois!'' and, tottering as far as the door, she saw her niece

clinging to a strange man in a red cap and with a sabre by his side who yelled excitedly: ``You won't see

``I recognized the son Bron,'' went on Catherine. ``I knew his parents. When the troubles began he left his

home to follow the Revolution. I walked straight up to him and took the girl away from his side. She didn't

want much coaxing. The child always loved me,'' she continued, getting up from the stool and moving a little

closer to Peyrol. ``She remembered her Aunt Catherine. I tore the horrid blanket off her shoulders. Her hair

was clotted with blood and her clothes all stained with it. I took her upstairs. She was as helpless as a little

child. I undressed her and examined her all over. She had no hurt anywhere. I was sure of thatbut of what

more could I be sure? I couldn't make sense of the things she babbled at me. Her very voice distracted me.

She fell asleep directly I had put her into my bed, and I stood there looking down at her, nearly going out of

my mind with the thought of what that child may have been dragged through. When I went downstairs I

found that goodfornothing inside the house. He was ranting up and down the salle, vapouring and boasting

till I thought all this must be an awful dream. My head was in a whirl. He laid claim to her, and God knows

what. I seemed to understand things that made my hair stir on my head. I stood there clasping my hands with

``He frightened you,'' said Peyrol, looking at her steadily. Catherine moved a step nearer to him.

``What? The son Bron, frighten me! He was the butt of all the girls, mooning about amongst the people

outside the church on feast days in the time of the king. All the countryside knew about him. No. What I said

to myself was that I mustn't let him kill me. There upstairs was the child I had just got away from him, and

there was I, all alone with that man with the sabre and unable to get hold of a kitchen knife even.''

``What would you have had me to do?'' asked Catherine steadily. ``He had brought the child back out of those

shambles. It was a long time before I got an idea of what had happened. I don't know everything even yet and

I suppose I will never know. In a very few days my mind was more at case about Arlette, but it was a long

time before she would speak and then it was never anything to the purpose. And what could I have done

singlehanded? There was nobody I would condescend to call to my help. We of the Escampobar have never

been in favour with the peasants here,'' she said, proudly. ``And this is all I can tell you.''

Her voice faltered, she sat down on the stool again and took her chin in the palm of her hand. As Peyrol left

the house to go to the hamlet he saw Arlette and the patron come round the corner of the yard wall walking

That night he slept on board the renovated tartane and the rising sun found him at work about the hull. By

that time he had ceased to be the object of awed contemplation to the inhabitants of the hamlet who still,

however, kept up a mistrustful attitude. His only intermediary for communicating with them was the

miserable cripple. He was Peyrol's only company, in fact, during his period of work on the tartane. He had

more activity, audacity, and intelligence, it seemed to Peyrol, than all the rest of the inhabitants put together.

Early in the morning he could be seen making his way on his crutches with a pendulum motion towards the

hull on which Peyrol would have been already an hour or so at work. Peyrol then would throw him over a

sound rope's end and the cripple, leaning his crutches against the side of the tartane, would pull his wretched

little carcass, all withered below the waist, up the rope, hand over hand, with extreme ease. There, sitting on

the small foredeck, with his back against the mast and his thin, twisted legs folded in front of him, he would

keep Peyrol company, talking to him along the whole length of the tartane in a strained voice and sharing his

midday meal, as of right, since it was he generally who brought the provisions slung round his neck in a

quaint flat basket. Thus were the hours of labour shortened for Peyrol by shrewd remarks and bits of local

gossip. How the cripple got hold of it it was difficult to imagine, and the rover had not enough knowledge of

European superstitions to suspect him of flying through the night on a broomstick like a sort of male

witchfor there was a manliness in that twisted scrap of humanity which struck Peyrol from the first. His

very voice was manly and the character of his gossip was not feminine. He did indeed mention to Peyrol that

people used to take him about the neighbourhood in carts for the purpose of playing a fiddle at weddings and

other festive occasions; but this seemed hardly adequate, and even he himself confessed that there was not

much of that sort of thing going on during the Revolution when people didn't like to attract attention and

everything was done in a holeandcorner manner. There were no priests to officiate at weddings, and if

there were no ceremonies how could there be rejoicings? Of course children were born as before, but there

were no christeningsand people got to look funny somehow or other. Their countenances got changed

Peyrol, busy about one thing and another, listened without appearing to pay much attention to the story of the

Revolution, as if to the tale of an intelligent islander on the other side of the world talking of bloody rites and

amazing hopes of some religion unknown to the rest of mankind. But there was something biting in the

speech of that cripple which confused his thoughts a little. Sarcasm was a mystery which he could not

understand. On one occasion he remarked to his friend the cripple as they sat together on the foredeck

``There must have been something in it. But it doesn't seem to have done much for you people here.''

``To be sure,'' retorted the scrap of man vivaciously, ``it hasn't straightened my back or given me a pair of

Peyrol, whose trousers were rolled up above the knee because he had been washing the hold, looked at his

calves complacently. ``You could hardly have expected that,'' he remarked with simplicity.

``Ah, but you don't know what people with properly made bodies expected or pretended to,'' said the cripple.

``Everything was going to be changed. Everybody was going to tie up his dog with a string of sausages for

the sake of principles.'' His long face which, in repose, had an expression of suffering peculiar to cripples,

was lighted up by an enormous grin. ``They must feel jolly well sold by this time,'' he added. ``And of course

that vexes them, but I am not vexed. I was never vexed with my father and mother. While the poor things

were alive I never went hungrynot very hungry. They couldn't have been very proud of me.'' He paused

and seemed to contemplate himself mentally. ``I don't know what I would have done in their place.

Something very different. But then, don't you see, I know what it means to be like I am. Of course they

couldn't know, and I don't suppose the poor people had very much sense. A priest from

AlmanarreAlmanarre is a sort of village up there where there is a church. . . .''

Peyrol interrupted him by remarking that he knew all about Almanarre. This, on his part, was a simple

delusion because in reality he knew much less of Almanarre than of Zanzibar or any pirate village from there

up to Cape Guardafui. And the cripple contemplated him with his brown eyes which had an upward cast

``You know . . .! For me,'' he went on, in a tone of quiet decision, ``you are a man fallen from the sky. Well, a

priest from Almanarre came to bury them. A fine man with a stern face. The finest man I have seen from that

time till you dropped on us here. There was a story of a girl having fallen in love with him some years before.

I was old enough then to have heard something of it, but that's neither here nor there. Moreover, many people

Peyrol, without looking at the cripple, tried to imagine what sort of child he might have been what sort of

youth? The rover had seen staggering deformities, dreadful mutilations which were the cruel work of man;

but it was amongst people with dusky skins. And that made a great difference. But what he had heard and

seen since he had come back to his native land, the tales, the facts, and also the faces, reached his sensibility

with a particular force, because of that feeling that came to him so suddenly after a whole lifetime spent

amongst Indians, Malagashes, Arabs, blackamoors of all sorts, that he belonged there, to this land, and had

escaped all those things by a mere hair's breadth. His companion completed his significant silence, which

``All this was in the king's time. They didn't cut off his head till several years afterwards. It didn't make my

life any easier for me, but since those Republicans had deposed God and flung Him out of all the churches I

``Spoken like a man,'' said Peyrol. Only the misshapen character of the cripple's back prevented Peyrol from

giving him a hearty slap. He got up to begin his afternoon's work. It was a bit of inside painting and from the

foredeck the cripple watched him at it with dreamy eyes and something ironic on his lips.

It was not till the sun had travelled over Cape Cicie, which could be seen across the water like dark mist in

the glare, that he opened his lips to ask: ``And what do you propose to do with this tartane, citoyen?''

Peyrol answered simply that the tartane was fit to go anywhere now, the very moment she took the water.

``You could go as far as Genoa and Naples and even further,'' suggested the cripple.

Peyrol never checked the toandfro movement of his brush, but it was with an effort. The fact was that he

had discovered in himself a distinct reluctance to go away from the Escampobar Farm. His desire to have

something of his own that could float was no longer associated with any desire to wander. The cripple was

right. The voyage of the renovated tartane would not take her very far. What was surprising was the fellow

The dragging of the renovated tartane into the water was a great affair. Everybody in the hamlet, including

the women, did a full day's work and there was never so much coin passed from hand to hand in the hamlet in

all the days of its obscure history. Swinging between his crutches on a low sandridge the cripple surveyed

the whole of the beach. It was he that had persuaded the villagers to lend a hand and had arranged the terms

for their assistance. It was he also who through a very miserablelooking pedlar (the only one who

frequented the peninsula) had got in touch with some rich persons in Frejus who had changed for Peyrol a

few of his gold pieces for current money. He had expedited the course of the most exciting and interesting

experience of his life, and now planted on the sand on his two sticks in the manner of a beacon he watched

the last operation. The rover, as if about to launch himself upon a track of a thousand miles, walked up to

``Don't talk like this to me, citoyen,'' said the cripple in a trembling voice. Till then, suspended between his

two sticks and with his shoulders as high as his ears, he had not looked towards the approaching Peyrol.

``I tell you,'' insisted the rover roughly, and as if the insignificance of mortal envelopes had presented itself to

him for the first time at the end of his roving life, ``I tell you that there is that in you which would make a

As he went away from the cripple towards the tartane, while the whole population of the hamlet disposed

around her waited for his word, some on land and some waistdeep in the water holding ropes in their hands,

Peyrol had a slight shudder at the thought: ``Suppose I had been born like that.'' Ever since he had put his foot

on his native land such thoughts had haunted him. They would have been impossible anywhere else. He could

not have been like any blackamoor, good, bad, or indifferent, hale or crippled, king or slave; but here, on this

Southern shore that had called to him irresistibly as he had approached the Straits of Gibraltar on what he had

felt to be his last voyage, any woman, lean and old enough, might have been his mother; he might have been

any Frenchman of them all, even one of those he pitied, even one of those he despised. He felt the grip of his

origins from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet while he clambered on board the tartane as if for a

long and distant voyage. As a matter of fact he knew very well that with a bit of luck it would be over in

about an hour. When the tartane took the water the feeling of being afloat plucked at his very heart. Some

Madrague fishermen had been persuaded by the cripple to help old Peyrol to sail the tartane round to the cove

below the Escampobar Farm. A glorious sun shone upon that short passage and the cove itself was full of

sparkling light when they arrived. The few Escampobar goats wandering on the hillside pretending to feed

where no grass was visible to the naked eye never even raised their heads. A gentle breeze drove the tartane,

as fresh as paint could make her, opposite a narrow crack in the cliff which gave admittance to a tiny basin,

no bigger than a village pond, concealed at the foot of the southern hill. It was there that old Peyrol, aided by

the Madrague men, who had their boat with them, towed his ship, the first really that he ever owned.

Once in, the tartane nearly filled the little basin, and the fishermen, getting into their boat, rowed away for

home. Peyrol, by spending the afternoon in dragging ropes ashore and fastening them to various boulders and

dwarf trees, moored her to his complete satisfaction. She was as safe from the tempests there as a house

After he had made everything fast on board and had furled the sails neatly, a matter of some time for one

man, Peyrol contemplated his arrangements which savoured of rest much more than of wandering, and found

them good. Though he never meant to abandon his room at the farmhouse he felt that his true home was in

the tartane, and he rejoiced at the idea that it was concealed from all eyes except perhaps the eyes of the goats

when their arduous feeding took them on the southern slope. He lingered on board, he even threw open the

sliding door of the little cabin, which now smelt of fresh paint, not of stale blood. Before he started for the

farm the sun had travelled far beyond Spain and all the sky to the west was yellow, while on the side of Italy

it presented a sombre canopy pierced here and there with the light of stars. Catherine put a plate on the table,

He spent a lot of his time on board, going down early, coming up at midday ``pour manger la soupe,'' and

sleeping on board almost every night. He did not like to leave the tartane alone for so many hours. Often,

having climbed a little way up to the house, he would turn round for a last look at her in the gathering dusk,

and actually would go back again. After Michel had been enlisted for a crew and had taken his abode on

board for good, Peyrol found it a much easier matter to spend his nights in the lanternlike room at the top of

Often waking up at night he would get up to look at the starry sky out of all his three windows in succession,

and think: ``Now there is nothing in the world to prevent me getting out to sea in less than an hour.'' As a

matter of fact it was possible for two men to manage the tartane. Thus Peyrol's thought was comfortingly true

in every way, for he loved to feel himself free, and Michel of the lagoon, after the death of his depressed dog,

had no tie on earth. It was a fine thought which somehow made it quite easy for Peyrol to go back to his

Perched sideways on the circular wall bordering the well, in the full blaze of the midday sun, the rover of the

distant seas and the fisherman of the lagoon, sharing between them a most surprising secret, had the air of

Peyrol could not deny that. It was a sufficient answer. It shifted the responsibility on to his shoulders and all

his life he had been accustomed to trust to the work of his own hands, in peace and in war. Yet he looked

There could be no greater contrast than those two faces: Peyrol's clean, like a carving of stone, and only very

little softened by time, and that of the owner of the late dog, hirsute, with many silver threads, with

something elusive in the features and the vagueness of expression of a baby in arms. ``Yes, I know the man,''

repeated Peyrol. Michel's mouth fell open at this, a small oval set a little crookedly in the innocent face.

The possession of a common and momentous secret drawing men together, Peyrol condescended to explain.

He spoke as though he had made it himself. Michel, who in the face of that positive statement had forgotten

``Yes. After I got out and locked the door I listened for a bit and I thought I heard him snore.''

``I had to come up and show myself this morning as if nothing had happened,'' he said. ``The officer has been

here for two days and he might have taken it into his head to go down to the tartane. I have been on the

stretch all the morning. A goat jumping up was enough to give me a turn. Fancy him running up here with his

``It takes a lot to even half kill a Brother of the Coast. There are men and men. You, for instance,'' Peyrol

continued placidly, ``you would have been altogether killed if it had been your head that got in the way. And

there are animals, beasts twice your size, regular monsters, that may be killed with nothing more than just a

tap on the nose. That's well known. I was really afraid he would overcome you in some way or other. . . .''

``Come, maitre! One isn't a little child,'' protested Michel against this accumulation of improbabilities. He did

it, however, only in a whisper and with childlike shyness. Peyrol folded his arms on his breast:

``Go, finish your soup,'' he commanded in a low voice, ``and then go down to the tartane. You locked the

``Yes, I have,'' protested Michel, staggered by this display of anxiety. ``He could sooner burst the deck above

``All the same, take a small spar and shore up that door against the heel of the mast. And then watch outside.

Don't you go in to him on any account. Stay on deck and keep a lookout for me. There is a tangle here that

won't be easily cleared and I must be very careful. I will try to slip away and get down as soon as I get rid of

The conference in the sunshine being ended, Peyrol walked leisurely out of the yard gate, and protruding his

head beyond the corner of the house, saw Lieutenant Real sitting on the bench. This he had expected to see.

But he had not expected to see him there alone. It was just like this: wherever Arlette happened to be, there

were worrying possibilities. But she might have been helping her aunt in the kitchen with her sleeves rolled

up on such white arms as Peyrol had never seen on any woman before. The way she had taken to dressing her

hair in a plait with a broad black velvet ribbon and an Arlesian cap was very becoming. She was wearing now

her mother's clothes of which there were chestfuls, altered for her of course. The late mistress of the

Escampobar Farm had been an Arlesienne. Welltodo, too. Yes, even for women's clothes the Escampobar

natives could do without intercourse with the outer world. It was quite time that this confounded lieutenant

went back to Toulon. This was the third day. His short leave must be up. Peyrol's attitude towards naval

officers had been always guarded and suspicious. His relations with them had been very mixed. They had

been his enemies and his superiors. He had been chased by them. He had been trusted by them. The

Revolution had made a clean cut across the consistency of his wild lifeBrother of the Coast and gunner in

the national navyand yet he was always the same man. It was like that, too, with them. Officers of the

King, officers of the Republic, it was only changing the skin. All alike looked askance at a free rover. Even

this one could not forget his epaulettes when talking to him. Scorn and mistrust of epaulettes were rooted

deeply in old Peyrol. Yet he did not absolutely hate Lieutenant Real. Only the fellow's coming to the farm

was generally a curse and his presence at that particular moment a confounded nuisance and to a certain

extent even a danger. ``I have no mind to be hauled to Toulon by the scruff of my neck,'' Peyrol said to

himself. There was no trusting those epaulettewearers. Any one of them was capable of jumping on his best

Peyrol, stepping round the corner, sat down by the side of Lieutenant Real with the feeling somehow of

coming to grips with a slippery customer. The lieutenant, as he sat there, unaware of Peyrol's survey of his

person, gave no notion of slipperiness. On the contrary, he looked rather immovably established. Very much

at home. Too much at home. Even after Peyrol sat down by his side he continued to look immovableor at

least difficult to get rid of. In the still noonday heat the faint shrilling of cicadas was the only sound of life

heard for quite a long time. Delicate, evanescent, cheerful, careless sort of life, yet not without passion. A

sudden gloom seemed to be cast over the joy of the cicadas by the lieutenant's voice though the words were

In the stress of the situation Peyrol at once asked himself: ``Now why does he say that? Where did he expect

me to be?'' The lieutenant need not have spoken at all. He had known him now for about two years off and

on, and it had happened many times that they had sat side by side on that bench in a sort of ``at arm's length''

equality without exchanging a single word. And why could he not have kept quiet now? That naval officer

never spoke without an object, but what could one make of words like that? Peyrol achieved an insincere

And to himself he thought: ``No fear, he won't go to his room.'' He would stay there and thereby keep him,

Peyrol, from going down to the cove. He turned his eyes on that naval officer, and if extreme and

concentrated desire and mere force of will could have had any effect Lieutenant Real would certainly have

been removed suddenly from that bench. But he didn't move. And Peyrol was astonished to see that man

``Frank with you,'' repeated the rover. ``You want me to be frank with you? Well, I have wished you to the

``That's better,'' said Lieutenant Real. ``But why? I never tried to do you any harm.''

``Me harm,'' cried Peyrol, ``to me?'' But he faltered in his indignation as if frightened at it and ended in a very

quiet tone: ``You have been nosing in a lot of dirty papers to find something against a man who was not

``Quite a mistake. There was no nosing amongst papers. I came on them quite by accident. I won't deny I was

intrigue finding a man of your sort living in this place. But don't be uneasy. Nobody would trouble his head

``You! You talk to me of fear . . .? No,'' cried the rover, ``it's enough to turn a fellow into a sansculotte if it

The lieutenant turned his head sharply, and for a moment the naval officer and the free searover looked at

``Why should I fear anybody? I owe nothing to anybody. I have given them up the prize ship in order and

everything else, except my luck; and for that I account to nobody,'' he added darkly.

``I don't know what you are driving at,'' the lieutenant said after a moment of thought. ``All I know is that you

seem to have given up your share of the prize money. There is no record of you ever claiming it.''

Peyrol did not like the sarcastic tone. ``You have a nasty tongue,'' he said, ``with your damned trick of talking

``No offence,'' said the lieutenant, grave but a little puzzled. ``Nobody will drag out that against you. It has

Peyrol was grumbling and swearing to himself with such concentration that the lieutenant stopped and waited

``And there is no record of desertion or anything like that,'' he continued then. ``You stand there as disparu. I

believe that after searching for you a little they came to the conclusion that you had come by your death

``Did they? Well, perhaps old Peyrol is dead. At any rate he has buried himself here.'' The rover suffered

from great instability of feelings for he passed in a flash from melancholy into fierceness. ``And he was quiet

enough till you came sniffing around this hole. More than once in my life I had occasion to wonder how soon

the jackals would have a chance to dig up my carcass; but to have a naval officer come scratching round here

was the last thing. . . .'' Again a change came over him. ``What can you want here?'' he whispered, suddenly

The lieutenant fell into the humour of that discourse. ``I don't want to disturb the dead,'' he said, turning full

to the rover who after his last words had fixed his eyes on the ground. ``I want to talk to the gunner Peyrol.''

Peyrol, without raising his eyes from the ground, growled: ``He isn't here. He is disparu. Go and look at the

``That,'' said Lieutenant Real, in a conversational tone, ``that is a lie. He was talking to me this morning on

the hillside as we were looking at the English ship. He knows all about her. He told me he spent nights

making plans for her capture. He seemed to be a fellow with his heart in the right place. Un homme de coeur.

``Humph,'' he grunted. A heavy, noncommittal grunt. His old heart was stirred, but the tangle was such that

he had to be on his guard with any man who wore epaulettes. His profile preserved the immobility of a head

struck on a medal while he listened to the lieutenant assuring him that this time he had come to Escampobar

on purpose to speak with the gunner Peyrol. That he had not done so before was because it was a very

confidential matter. At this point the lieutenant stopped and Peyrol made no sign. Inwardly he was asking

himself what the lieutenant was driving at. But the lieutenant seemed to have shifted his ground. His tone,

``You say you have made a study of that English ship's movements. Well, for instance, suppose a breeze

springs up, as it very likely will towards the evening, could you tell me where she will be tonight? I mean,

``But you said you have been observing him minutely for weeks. There aren't so many alternatives, and

taking the weather and everything into consideration, you can judge almost with certainty.''

``Can't you? Then you are worse than any of the old admirals that you think so little of. Why can't you?''

``I will tell you why,'' said Peyrol after a pause and with a face more like a carving than ever. ``It's because

the fellow has never come so far this way before. Therefore I don't know what he has got in his mind, and in

consequence I can't guess what he will do next. I may be able to tell you some other day but not today. Next

``Did you think I was here on leave? I tell you I am on service. Don't you believe me?''

Peyrol let out a heavy sigh. ``Yes, I believe you. And so they are thinking of catching her alive. And you are

sent on service. Well, that doesn't make it any easier for me to see you here.''

``You are a strange man, Peyrol,'' said the lieutenant. ``I believe you wish me dead.''

``No. Only out of this. But you are right, Peyrol is no friend either to your face or to your voice. They have

They had never attained to such intimate terms before. There was no need for them to look at each other. The

lieutenant thought: ``Ah! He can't keep his jealousy in.'' There was no scorn or malice in that thought. It was

``I have felt sometimes as if I could fly at your throat,'' said Peyrol in a sort of calm whisper. ``And it amuses

Again Peyrol turned his head slowly for a long, steady stare. And again the naval officer and the rover gazed

at each other with a searching and sombre frankness. This newborn intimacy could go no further.

Though he seemed to have adopted the notion of a double personality the rover did not seem to be much

easier in one character than in the other. Furrows of perplexity appeared on his brow, and as the lieutenant did

``So they are thinking of catching her alive?'' It did not please him to hear the lieutenant say that it was not

exactly this that the chiefs in Toulon had in their minds. Peyrol at once expressed the opinion that of all the

naval chiefs that ever were, Citizen Renaud was the only one that was worth anything. Lieutenant Real,

``What they want to know is whether that English corvette interferes much with the coast traffic.''

``No, she doesn't,'' said Peyrol: ``she leaves poor people alone, unless, I suppose, some craft acts

suspiciously. I have seen her give chase to one or two. But even those she did not detain. Michel you

know Michelhas heard from the mainland people that she has captured several at various times. Of

``Well, no. I wonder now what that Englishman would call `acting suspiciously.' ''

``Ah, now you are asking something. Don't you know what an Englishman is? One day easy and casual, next

day ready to pounce on you like a tiger. Hard in the morning, careless in the afternoon, and only reliable in a

fight, whether with or against you, but for the rest perfectly fantastic. You might think a little touched in the

The lieutenant lending an attentive ear, Peyrol smoothed his brow and discoursed with gusto of Englishmen

as if they had been a strange, very littleknown tribe. ``In a manner of speaking,'' he concluded, ``the oldest

bird of them all can be caught with chaff, but not every day.'' He shook his head, smiling to himself faintly as

``You didn't get all that knowledge of the English while you were a gunner,'' observed the lieutenant dryly.

``There you go again,'' said Peyrol. ``And what's that to you where I learned it all? Suppose I learned it all

``I see. It amounts to this, that one can't get at the back of their minds very easily.''

``No,'' said Peyrol, then added grumpily, ``and some Frenchmen are not much better. I wish I could get at the

``You would find a service matter there, gunner, that's what you would find there, and a matter that seems

nothing much at first sight, but when you look into it, is about as difficult to manage properly as anything you

ever undertook in your life. It puzzled all the bigwigs. It must have, since I was called in. Of course I work

on shore at the Admiralty and I was in the way. They showed me the order from Paris and I could see at once

Peyrol looked at him searchingly. ``Do you mean to say that in the whole fleet you couldn't have found a

``I never attempted to look for one there. My chief agreed with me that it isn't a service for navy men.''

``Well, it must be something nasty for a naval man to admit that much. What is the order? I don't suppose you

The lieutenant plunged his hand into the inside pocket of his naval jacket and then brought it out empty.

``Understand, Peyrol,'' he said earnestly, ``this is not a service of fighting. Good men are plentiful for that.

``Trick?'' said Peyrol in a judicial tone, ``that's all right. I have seen in the Indian Seas Monsieur Surcouf play

tricks on the English . . . seen them with my own eyes, deceptions, disguises, and suchlike. . . . That's quite

``Certainly. The order for this one comes from the First Consul himself, for it is no small matter. It's to

After expressing that opinion the old rover pulled out a red bandana handkerchief and after rubbing his face

This time the lieutenant really brought out a paper from his pocket and saying, ``I have copied the order for

Lieutenant Real watched old Peyrol handling it at arm's length, then with his arm bent trying to adjust the

distance to his eyesight, and wondered whether he had copied it in a hand big enough to be read easily by the

gunner Peyrol. The order ran like this: ``You will make up a packet of dispatches and pretended private

letters as if from officers, containing a clear statement besides hints calculated to convince the enemy that the

destination of the fleet now fitting in Toulon is for Egypt and generally for the East. That packet you will

send by sea in some small craft to Naples, taking care that the vessel shall fall into the enemy's hands.'' The

Prefet Maritime had called Real, had shown him the paragraph of the letter from Paris, had turned the page

over and laid his finger on the signature, ``Bonaparte.'' Then after giving him a meaning glance, the admiral

locked up the paper in a drawer and put the key in his pocket. Lieutenant Real had written the passage down

The rover, screwing his eyes and pursing his lips, had come to the end of it. The lieutenant extended his hand

negligently and took the paper away: ``Well, what do you think?'' he asked. ``You understand that there can

be no question of any ship of war being sacrificed to that dodge. What do you think of it?''

``He said: `Parfaitement. Have you got any ideas about it?' And I saidlisten to me, gunnerI said: `Oui,

Amiral, I think I've got a man,' and the admiral interrupted me at once: `All right, you don't want to talk to me

about him. I put you in charge of that affair and give you a week to arrange it. When it's done report to me.

Meantime you may just as well take this packet.' They were already prepared, Peyrol, all those faked letters

and dispatches. I carried it out of the admiral's room, a parcel done up in sailcloth, properly corded and

sealed. I have had it in my possession for three days. It's upstairs in my valise.''

``No,'' admitted the lieutenant. ``I can also dispose of a few thousand francs.''

``Francs,'' repeated Peyrol. ``Well, you had better get back to Toulon and try to bribe some man to put his

Real reflected, then said slowly, ``I wouldn't tell any man that. Of course a service of danger, that would be

``It would be. And if you could get a fellow with some sense in his caboche, he would naturally try to slip

``Yes. And it may happen that your course would just take him clear of all Nelson's fleet, for you never can

``Maybe. But that's not doing the job, that's taking a chance. Do you think you are talking to a toothless

``No, my gunner. It will take a strong man's teeth to undo that knot.'' A moment of silence followed. Then

``I will tell you what it is, lieutenant. This seems to me just the sort of order that a landlubber would give to

``I don't deny it,'' the lieutenant admitted. ``And look at the whole difficulty. For supposing even that the

tartane blunders right into the English fleet, as if it had been indeed arranged, they would just look into her

hold or perhaps poke their noses here and there but it would never occur to them to search for dispatches,

would it? Our man, of course, would have them well hidden, wouldn't he? He is not to know. And if he were

ass enough to leave them lying about the decks the English would at once smell a rat there. But what I think

``Evidently. But where's the bribe big enough to induce a man to taste of the English pontoons?''

``The man will take the bribe all right and then will do his best not to be caught; and if he can't avoid that, he

will take jolly good care that the English should find nothing on board his tartane. Oh no, lieutenant, any

damn scallywag that owns a tartane will take a couple of thousand francs from your hand as tame as can be;

but as to deceiving the English Admiral, it's the very devil of an affair. Didn't you think of all that before you

``I did see it, and I put it all before him,'' the lieutenant said, lowering his voice still more, for their

conversation had been carried on in undertones though the house behind them was silent and solitude reigned

round the approaches of Escampobar Farm. It was the hour of siestafor those that could sleep. The

lieutenant, edging closer towards the old man, almost breathed the words in his ear.

``What I wanted was to hear you say all those things. Do you understand now what I meant this morning on

``I remember a naval officer trying to shake old Peyrol off his feet and not managing to do it. I may be

disparu but I am too solid yet for any blancbec that loses his temper, devil only knows why. And it's a good

thing that you didn't manage it, else I would have taken you down with me, and we would have made our last

somersault together for the amusement of an English ship's company. A pretty end that!''

``Don't you remember me saying, when you mentioned that the English would have sent a boat to go through

our pockets, that this would have been the perfect way?'' In his stony immobility with the other man leaning

towards his car, Peyrol seemed a mere insensible receptacle for whispers, and the lieutenant went on forcibly:

``Well, it was in allusion to this affair, for, look here, gunner, what could be more convincing, if they had

found the packet of dispatches on me! What would have been their surprise, their wonder! Not the slightest

doubt could enter their heads. Could it, gunner? Of course it couldn't. I can imagine the captain of that

corvette crowding sail on her to get this packet into the Admiral's hands. The secret of the Toulon fleet's

destination found on the body of a dead officer. Wouldn't they have exulted at their enormous piece of luck!

But they wouldn't have called it accidental. Oh, no! They would have called it providential. I know the

English a little too. They like to have God on their side the only ally they never need pay a subsidy to.

Lieutenant Real threw himself back and Peyrol, still like a carven image of grim dreaminess, growled softly:

``Time yet. The English ship is still in the Passe.'' He waited a little in his uncanny livingstatue manner

before he added viciously: ``You don't seem in a hurry to go and take that leap.''

``Upon my word, I am almost sick enough of life to do it,'' the lieutenant said in a conversational tone.

``Well, don't forget to run upstairs and take that packet with you before you go,'' said Peyrol as before. ``But

don't wait for me; I am not sick of life. I am disparu, and that's good enough. There's no need for me to die.''

And at last he moved in his seat, swung his head from side to side as if to make sure that his neck had not

been turned to stone, emitted a short laugh, and grumbled: ``Disparu! Hein! Well, I am damned!'' as if the

word ``vanished'' had been a gross insult to enter against a man's name in a register. It seemed to rankle, as

Lieutenant Real observed with some surprise; or else it was something inarticulate that rankled, manifesting

itself in that funny way. The lieutenant, too, had a moment of anger which flamed and went out at once in the

deadly cold philosophic reflection: ``We are victims of the destiny which has brought us together.'' Then

again his resentment flamed. Why should he have stumbled against that girl or that woman, he didn't know

how he must think of her, and suffer so horribly for it? He who had endeavoured almost from a boy to

destroy all the softer feelings within himself. His changing moods of distaste, of wonder at himself and at the

unexpected turns of life, wore the aspect of profound abstraction from which he was recalled by an outburst

``No,'' cried Peyrol, ``I am too old to break my bones for the sake of a lubberly soldier in Paris who fancies he

``I don't ask you to,'' the lieutenant said, with extreme severity, in what Peyrol would call an epaulette

wearer's voice. ``You old seabandit. And it wouldn't be for the sake of a soldier anyhow. You and I are

``Yes,'' said Real. ``This morning, listening to your talk on the hillside with that English corvette within one

``Yes,'' groaned Peyrol. ``A Frenchbuilt ship!'' He struck his breast a resounding blow. ``It hurts one there to

``Yes, there you and I understood each other,'' said the lieutenant. ``But look here, this affair is a much bigger

thing than getting back a captured corvette. In reality it is much more than merely playing a trick on an

admiral. It's a part of a deep plan, Peyrol! It's another stroke to help us on the way towards a great victory at

``Us!'' said Peyrol. ``I am a seabandit and you are a seaofficer. What do you mean by us?''

``I mean all Frenchmen,'' said the lieutenant. ``Or, let us say simply France, which you too have served.''

Peyrol, whose stoneeffigy bearing had become humanized almost against his will, gave an appreciative nod,

and said: ``You've got something in your mind. Now what is it? If you will trust a seabandit.''

``No, I will trust a gunner of the Republic. It occurred to me that for this great affair we could make use of

this corvette that you have been observing so long. For to count on the capture of any old tartane by the fleet

``A lubberly notion,'' assented Peyrol, with more heartiness than he had ever displayed towards Lieutenant

``Yes, but there's that corvette. Couldn't something be arranged to make them swallow the whole thing,

``I laugh because it would be a great joke,'' said Peyrol, whose hilarity was very shortlived. ``That fellow on

board, he thinks himself very clever. I never set my eyes on him, but I used to feel that I knew him as if he

He stopped short. Lieutenant Real, after observing the sudden change on his countenance, said in an

``Not the slightest,'' said Peyrol, turning suddenly into stone as if by enchantment. The lieutenant did not feel

discouraged and he was not surprised to hear the effigy of Peyrol pronounce: ``All the same one could see.''

``Yes. I will only go down to Madrague and leave word with the sailing barge which was to come today

``No, lieutenant. You must return to Toulon today. When you get there you must turn out some of those

damned quilldrivers at the Port Office if it were midnight and have papers made out for a tartaneoh, any

name you like. Some sort of papers. And then you must come back as soon as you can. Why not go down to

Madrague now and see whether the barge isn't already there? If she is, then by starting at once you may get

He got up impetuously and the lieutenant stood up too. Hesitation was imprinted on his whole attitude.

Peyrol's aspect was not animated, but his Roman face with its severe aspect gave him a great air of authority.

``No,'' said the rover. ``Not till we meet again. If you return during the night don't you try to get into the

house. Wait outside. Don't rouse anybody. I will be about, and if there is anything to say I will say it to you

then. What are you looking about you for? You don't want to go up for your valise. Your pistols up in your

room too? What do you want with pistols, only to go to Toulon and back with a naval boat's crew?'' He

actually laid his hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and impelled him gently towards the track leading to

Madrague. Real turned his head at the touch and their eyes met with the strained closeness of a wrestler's hug.

It was the lieutenant who gave way before the unflinchingly direct stare of the old Brother of the Coast. He

gave way under the cover of a sarcastic smile and a very airy, ``I see you want me out of the way for some

reason or other,'' which produced not the slightest effect upon Peyrol, who stood with his arm pointing

towards Madrague. When the lieutenant turned his back on him Peyrol's pointing arm fell down by his side;

but he watched the lieutenant out of sight before he turned too and moved in a contrary direction.

On losing sight of the perplexed lieutenant, Peyrol discovered that his own mind was a perfect blank. He

started to get down to his tartane after one sidelong look at the face of the house which contained quite a

different problem. Let that wait. His head feeling strangely empty, he felt the pressing necessity of furnishing

it with some thought without loss of time. He scrambled down steep places, caught at bushes, stepped from

stone to stone, with the assurance of long practice, with mechanical precision and without for a moment

relaxing his efforts to capture some definite scheme which he could put into his head. To his right the cove

lay full of pale light, while the rest of the Mediterranean extended beyond it in a dark, unruffled blue. Peyrol

was making for the little basin where his tartane had been hidden for years, like a jewel in a casket meant

only for the secret rejoicing of his eye, of no more practical use than a miser's hoardand as precious!

Coming upon a hollow in the ground where grew a few bushes and even a few blades of grass, Peyrol sat

down to rest. In that position his visible world was limited to a stony slope, a few boulders, the bush against

which he leaned and the vista of a piece of empty seahorizon. He perceived that he detested that lieutenant

much more when he didn't see him. There was something in the fellow. Well, at any rate he had got rid of

him for say eight or ten hours. An uneasiness came over the old rover, a sense of the endangered stability of

things, which was anything but welcome. He wondered at it, and the thought ``I am growing old,'' intruded on

him again. And yet he was aware of his sturdy body. He could still creep stealthily like an Indian and with his

trusty cudgel knock a man over with a certain aim at the back of his head, and with force enough to fell him

like a bullock. He had done that thing no further back than two o'clock the night before, not twelve hours ago,

as easy as easy and without an undue sense of exertion. This fact cheered him up. But still he could not find

an idea for his head. Not what one could call a real idea. It wouldn't come. It was no use sitting there.

He got up and after a few strides came to a stony ridge from which he could see the two white blunt

mastheads of his tartane. Her hull was hidden from him by the formation of the shore, in which the most

prominent feature was a big flat piece of rock. That was the spot on which not twelve hours before Peyrol,

unable to rest in his bed and coming to seek sleep in his tartane, had seen by moonlight a man standing above

his vessel and looking down at her, a characteristic forked black shape that certainly had no business to be

there. Peyrol, by a sudden and logical deduction, had said to himself. ``Landed from an English boat.'' Why,

how, wherefore, he did not stay to consider. He acted at once like a man accustomed for many years to meet

emergencies of the most unexpected kind. The dark figure, lost in a sort of attentive amazement, heard

nothing, suspected nothing. The impact of the thick end of the cudgel came down on its head like a

thunderbolt from the blue. The sides of the little basin echoed the crash. But he could not have heard it. The

force of the blow flung the senseless body over the edge of the flat rock and down headlong into the open

hold of the tartane, which received it with the sound of a muffled drum. Peyrol could not have done the job

better at the age of twenty. No. Not so well. There was swiftness, mature judgmentand the sound of the

muffled drum was followed by a perfect silence, without a sigh, without a moan. Peyrol ran round a little

promontory to where the shore shelved down to the level of the tartanes rail and got on board. And still the

silence remained perfect in the cold moonlight and amongst the deep shadows of the rocks. It remained

perfect because Michel, who always slept under the halfdeck forward, being wakened by the thump which

had made the whole tartane tremble, had lost the power of speech. With his head just protruding from under

the halfdeck, arrested on all fours and shivering violently like a dog that had been washed with hot water, he

was kept from advancing further by his terror of this bewitched corpse that had come on board flying through

The ``You there, Michel,'' pronounced in an undertone, acted like a moral tonic. This then was not the doing

of the Evil One; it was no sorcery! And even if it had been, now that Peyrol was there, Michel had lost all

fear. He ventured not a single question while he helped Peyrol to turn over the limp body. Its face was

covered with blood from the cut on the forehead which it had got by striking the sharp edge of the keelson.

What accounted for the head not being completely smashed and for no limbs being broken was the fact that

on its way through the air the victim of undue curiosity had come in contact with and had snapped like a

carrot one of the foremast shrouds. Raising his eves casually Peyrol noticed the broken rope, and at once put

``Yes,'' said Peyrol. ``The cabin is used to that kind of thing,'' and suddenly he felt very bitter. ``It has been a

While Michel was away executing that order Peyrol's eyes roamed all over the shores of the basin, for he

could not divest himself of the idea that there must be more Englishmen dodging about. That one of the

corvette's boats was still in the cove he had not the slightest doubt. As to the motive of her coming, it was

incomprehensible. Only that senseless form lying at his feet could perhaps have told him: but Peyrol had little

hope that it would ever speak again. If his friends started to look for their shipmate there was just a bare

chance that they would not discover the existence of the basin. Peyrol stooped and felt the body all over. He

found no weapon of any kind on it. There was only a common claspknife on a lanyard round its neck.

That soul of obedience, Michel, returning from aft, was directed to throw a couple of bucketfuls of salt water

upon the bloody head with its face upturned to the moon. The lowering of the body down into the cabin was a

matter of some little difficulty. It was heavy. They laid it full length on a locker and after Michel with a

strange tidiness had arranged its arms along its sides it looked incredibly rigid. The dripping head with

soaked hair was like the head of a drowned man with a gaping pink gash on the forehead.

``Go on deck to keep a lookout,'' said Peyrol. ``We may have to fight yet before the night's out.''

After Michel left him Peyrol began by flinging off his jacket and, without a pause, dragging his shirt off over

his head. It was a very fine shirt. The Brothers of the Coast in their hours of ease were by no means a ragged

crowd, and Peyrol the gunner had preserved a taste for fine linen. He tore the shirt into long strips, sat down

on the locker and took the wet head on his knees. He bandaged it with some skill, working as calmly as

though he had been practising on a dummy. Then the experienced Peyrol sought the lifeless hand and felt the

pulse. The spirit had not fled yet. The rover, stripped to the waist, his powerful arms folded on the grizzled

pelt of his bare breast, sat gazing down at the inert face in his lap with the eyes closed peacefully under the

white band covering the forehead. He contemplated the heavy jaw combined oddly with a certain roundness

of cheek, the noticeably broad nose with a sharp tip and a faint dent across the bridge, either natural or the

result of some old injury. A face of brown clay, roughly modelled, with a lot of black eyelashes stuck on the

closed lids and looking artificially youthful on that physiognomy forty years old or more. And Peyrol thought

of his youth. Not his own youth; that he was never anxious to recapture. It was of that man's youth that he

thought, of how that face had looked twenty years ago. Suddenly he shifted his position, and putting his lips

It seemed enough to wake up the dead. A faint ``Voila! Voila!'' was the answer from a distance, and presently

Michel put his head into the cabin with an anxious grin and a gleam in the round eyes.

``No,'' said Peyrol, ``into that bunk. Steady! Don't bang his head," he cried with unexpected tenderness.

``Throw a blanket over him. Stay in the cabin and keep his bandages wetted with salt water. I don't think

This was one reason the more why Peyrol was in a hurry to get back to the house and steal up to his room

unseen. He drew on his jacket over his bare skin, picked up his cudgel, recommended Michel not to let that

strange bird get out of the cabin on any account. As Michel was convinced that the man would never walk

The dawn had broken some time before Peyrol, on his way up to Escampobar, happened to look round and

had the luck to actually see with his own eyes the English manofwar's boat pulling out of the cove. This

confirmed his surmises but did not enlighten him a bit as to the causes. Puzzled and uneasy, he approached

the house through the farmyard Catherine, always the first up, stood at the open kitchen door. She moved

aside and would have let him pass without remark, if Peyrol himself had not asked in a whisper: ``Anything

new?'' She answered him in the same tone: ``She has taken to roaming at night.'' Peyrol stole silently up to his

bedroom, from which he descended an hour later as though he had spent all the night in his bed up there.

It was this nocturnal adventure which had affected the character of Peyrol's forenoon talk with the lieutenant.

What with one thing and another he found it very trying. Now that he had got rid of Real for several hours,

the rover had to turn his attention to that other invader of the strained, questionable, and ominous in its

origins, peace of the Escampobar Farm. As he sat on the flat rock with his eyes fixed idly on the few drops of

blood betraying his last night's work to the high heaven, and trying to get hold of something definite that he

could think about, Peyrol became aware of a faint thundering noise. Faint as it was it filled the whole basin.

He soon guessed its nature, and his face lost its perplexity. He picked up his cudgel, got on his feet briskly,

muttering to himself. ``He's anything but dead,'' and hurried on board the tartane.

On the afterdeck Michel was keeping a lookout. He had carried out the orders he had received by the well.

Besides being secured by the very obvious padlock, the cabin door was shored up by a spar which made it

stand as firm as a rock. The thundering noise seemed to issue from its immovable substance magically. It

ceased for a moment, and a sort of distracted continuous growling could be heard. Then the thundering began

``That he can do it at all is a miracle,'' said Michel, showing a certain excitement. ``He stands on the ladder

and beats the door with his fists. He is getting better. He began about half an hour after I got back on board.

He drummed for a bit and then fell off the ladder. I heard him. I had my ear against the scuttle. He lay there

and talked to himself for a long time. Then he went at it again.'' Peyrol approached the scuttle while Michel

``Easy there,'' said Peyrol in a deep authoritative voice. ``Time you finish that noise.''

These words brought instantly a deathlike silence. Michel ceased to grin. He wondered at the power of these

Peyrol himself smiled faintly. It was ages since he had uttered a sentence of English. He waited complacently

until Michel had unbarred and unlocked the door of the cabin. After it was thrown open he boomed out a

warning: ``Stand clear!'' and, turning about, went down with great deliberation, ordering Michel to go

Down there the man with the bandaged head was hanging on to the table and swearing feebly without

intermission. Peyrol, after listening for a time with an air of interested recognition as one would to a tune

``That will do.'' After a short silence he added: ``You look bien malade, hein? What you call sick,'' in a tone

``Who are you?'' asked the prisoner, looking frightened and throwing his arm up quickly to guard his head

against the coming blow. But Peyrol's uplifted hand fell only on his shoulder in a hearty slap which made him

sit down suddenly on a locker in a partly collapsed attitude and unable to speak. But though very much dazed

he was able to watch Peyrol open a cupboard and produce from there a small demijohn and two tin cups. He

took heart to say plaintively: ``My throat's like tinder,'' and then suspiciously: ``Was it you who broke my

``It was me,'' admitted Peyrol, sitting down on the opposite side of the table and leaning back to look at his

``What the devil did you do that for?'' inquired the other with a sort of faint fierceness which left Peyrol

``Because you put your nose where you no business. Understand? I see you there under the moon, penche,

``Yes, in preference to letting you go and make a story of it on board your cursed corvette.''

``How did you say that? Kitten? Ha, ha, ha!'' laughed Peyrol. ``You make a nice petit chat.'' He seized the

demijohn by the neck and filled the mugs. ``There,'' he went on, pushing one towards the prisoner ``it's

Symons' state was as though the blow had robbed him of all power of resistance, of all faculty of surprise and

generally of all the means by which a man may assert himself except bitter resentment. His head was aching,

it seemed to him enormous, too heavy for his neck and as if full of hot smoke. He took a drink under Peyrol's

fixed gaze and with uncertain movements put down the mug. He looked drowsy for a moment. Presently a

little colour deepened his bronze; he hitched himself up on the locker and said in a strong voice:

``You played a damned dirty trick on me. Call yourself a man, walking on air behind a fellow's back and

``If I had met you anywhere else but looking at my tartane I would have done nothing to you. I would have

``How can I tell you? I can't tell where I am. I've never been here before. How long have I been here?''

``My head feels as if it would fall off if I moved,'' grumbled the other. . . . ``You are a damned bungler, that's

He seized the mug and emptied it down his throat. Peyrol drank too, observing him all the time. He put the

``How could I know it was you? I hit hard enough to crack the skull of any other man.''

``What do you mean? What do you know about my skull? What are you driving at? I don't know you, you

whiteheaded villain, going about at night knocking people on the head from behind. Did you do for our

``Oh yes! Your officer. What was he up to? What trouble did you people come to make here, anyhow?''

``Do you think they tell a boat's crew? Go and ask our officer. He went up the gully and our coxswain got the

jumps. He says to me: `You are lightfooted, Sam,' says he; `you just creep round the head of the cove and

see if our boat can be seen across from the other side.' Well, I couldn't see anything. That was all right. But I

``I would've sooner expected to see an elephant inland than a craft lying in a pool that seemed no bigger than

my hand. Could not understand how she got there. Couldn't help going down to find out and the next

thing I knew 1 was lying on my back with my head tied up, in a bunk in this kennel of a cabin here. Why

couldn't you have given me a hail and engaged me properly, yardarm to yardarm? You would have got me all

the same, because all I had in the way of weapons was the claspknife which you have looted off me.''

``Up on the shelf there,'' said Peyrol, looking round. ``No, my friend, I wasn't going to take the risk of seeing

``You need not have been afraid for your tartane. Our boat was after no tartane. We wouldn't have taken your

Peyrol filled the two mugs again. ``Ah,'' he said, ``I daresay you see many tartanes, but this one is not like the

others. You a sailorand you couldn't see that she was something extraordinary.''

``Hellfire and gunpowder!'' cried the other. ``How can you expect me to have seen anything? I just noticed

that her sails were bent before your club hit me on the head.'' He raised his hands to his head and groaned.

Peyrol's prisoner did look somewhat as though he had got his head broken in a drunken brawl. But to Peyrol

his appearance was not repulsive. The rover preserved a tender memory of his freebooter's life with its

lawless spirit and its spacious scene of action, before the change in the state of affairs in the Indian Ocean, the

astounding rumours from the outer world, made him reflect on its precarious character. It was true that he had

deserted the French flag when quite a youngster; but at that time that flag was white; and now it was a flag of

three colours. He had known the practice of liberty, equality and fraternity as understood in the haunts open

or secret of the Brotherhood of the Coast. So the change, if one could believe what people talked about, could

not be very great. The rover had also his own positive notions as to what these three words were worth.

Libertyto hold your own in the world if you could. Equalityyes! But no body of men ever

accomplished anything without a chief. All this was worth what it was worth. He regarded fraternity

somewhat differently. Of course brothers would quarrel amongst themselves; it was during a fierce quarrel

that flamed up suddenly in a company of Brothers that he had received the most dangerous wound of his life.

But for that Peyrol nursed no grudge against anybody. In his view the claim of the Brotherhood was a claim

for help against the outside world. And here he was sitting opposite a Brother whose head he had broken on

sufficient grounds. There he was across the table looking dishevelled and dazed, uncomprehending and

aggrieved, and that head of his proved as hard as ages ago when the nickname of Testa Dura had been given

to him by a Brother of Italian origin on some occasion or other, some butting match no doubt; just as he,

Peyrol himself, was known for a time on both sides of the Mozambique Channel as PoignedeFer, after an

incident when in the presence of the Brothers he played at arm's length with the windpipe of an obstreperous

negro sorcerer with an enormous girth of chest. The villagers brought out food with alacrity, and the sorcerer

Yes, no doubt it was Testa Dura; the young neophyte of the order (where and how picked up Peyrol never

heard), strange to the camp, simpleminded and much impressed by the swaggering cosmopolitan company in

which he found himself. He had attached himself to Peyrol in preference to some of his own countrymen of

whom there were several in that band, and used to run after him like a little dog and certainly had acted a

good shipmate's part on the occasion of that wound which had neither killed nor cowed Peyrol but merely had

The first suspicion of that amazing fact had intruded on Peyrol while he was bandaging that head by the light

of the smoky lamp. Since the fellow still lived, it was not in Peyrol to finish him off or let him lie unattended

like a dog. And then this was a sailor. His being English was no obstacle to the development of Peyrol's

mixed feelings in which hatred certainly had no place. Amongst the members of the Brotherhood it was the

Englishmen whom he preferred. He had also found amongst them that particular and loyal appreciation,

which a Frenchman of character and ability will receive from Englishmen sooner than from any other nation.

Peyrol had at times been a leader, without ever trying for it very much, for he was not ambitious. The lead

used to fall to him mostly at a time of crisis of some sort; and when he had got the lead it was on the

And so that youngster had turned into this English manofwar's man! In the fact itself there was nothing

impossible. You found Brothers of the Coast in all sorts of ships and in all sorts of places. Peyrol had found

one once in a very ancient and hopeless cripple practising the profession of a beggar on the steps of Manila

cathedral; and had left him the richer by two broad gold pieces to add to his secret hoard. There was a tale of

a Brother of the Coast having become a mandarin in China, and Peyrol believed it. One never knew where

and in what position one would find a Brother of the Coast. The wonderful thing was that this one should

have come to seek him out, to put himself in the way of his cudgel. Peyrol's greatest concern had been all

through that Sunday morning to conceal the whole adventure from Lieutenant Real. As against a wearer of

epaulettes, mutual protection was the first duty between Brothers of the Coast. The unexpectedness of that

claim coming to him after twenty years invested it with an extraordinary strength. What he would do with the

fellow he didn't know. But since that morning the situation had changed. Peyrol had received the lieutenant's

confidence and had got on terms with him in a special way. He fell into profound thought.

``Sacree tete dure,'' he muttered without rousing himself. Peyrol was annoyed a little at not having been

recognized. He could not conceive how difficult it would have been for Symons to identify this portly

deliberate person with a white head of hair as the object of his youthful admiration, the blackringleted

French Brother in the prime of life of whom everybody thought so much. Peyrol was roused by hearing the

``I am an Englishman, I am. I am not going to knuckle under to anybody. What are you going to do with

``I will do what I please,'' said Peyrol, who had been asking himself exactly the same question.

``Well, then, be quick about it, whatever it is. I don't care a damn what you do, butbequick about

He tried to be emphatic; but as a matter of fact the last words came out in a faltering tone. And old Peyrol

was touched. He thought that if he were to let him drink the mugful standing there, it would make him dead

``Allons. Drink.'' The other did not wait for a second invitation but could not control very well the

``Trinquons, eh?'' he proposed. But in his precarious condition the Englishman remained unforgiving.

``I'm damned if I do,'' he said indignantly, but so low that Peyrol had to turn his ear to catch the words. ``You

He drank, staring all the time at Peyrol in a manner which was meant to give offence but which struck Peyrol

``Sacre imbecile, va! Did I not tell you it was because of the tartane? If it hadn't been for the tartane I would

have hidden from you. I would have crouched behind a bush like awhat do you call them?lievre.''

``You are of no account,'' continued Peyrol. ``Ah! if you had been an officer I would have gone for you

Symons sighed deeply and easily. ``That's the way he went. We had heard on board of a house thereabouts.''

``Oh, he went to the house!'' said Peyrol. ``Well, if he did get there he must be very sorry for himself. There is

This inspired fib went down easily with the English sailor. Soldiers were stationed in many parts of the coast

as any seaman of the blockading fleet knew very well. To the many expressions which had passed over the

face of that man recovering from a long period of unconsciousness, there was added the shade of dismay.

``What the devil have they stuck soldiers on this piece of rock for?'' he asked.

``Oh, signalling post and things like that. I am not likely to tell you everything. Why! you might escape.''

That phrase reached the soberest spot in the whole of Symons' individuality. Things were happening, then.

Mr. Bolt was a prisoner. But the main idea evoked in his confused mind was that he would be given up to

those soldiers before very long. The prospect of captivity made his heart sink and he resolved to give as much

``You will have to get some of these soldiers to carry me up. I won't walk. I won't. Not after having had my

brains nearly knocked out from behind. I tell you straight! I won't walk. Not a step. They will have to carry

``Now you go and get a corporal with a file of men,'' insisted Symons obstinately. ``I want to be made a

proper prisoner of. Who the devil are you? You had no right to interfere. I believe you are a civilian. A

common marinero, whatever you may call yourself. You look to me a pretty fishy marinero at that. Where did

you learn English? In prisoneh? You ain't going to keep me in this damned doghole, on board your

``Don't you talk about the tartane,'' he said impressively, making his words as distinct as possible. ``I told you

she was not like the other tartanes. That is because she is a courier boat. Every time she goes to sea she makes

a pieddenez, what you call thumb to the nose, to all your English cruisers. I do not mind telling you

``Who are you? The caretaker of this thing or what?'' asked the undaunted Symons. But Peyrol's mysterious

silence seemed to intimidate him at last. He became dejected and began to curse in a languid tone all boat

Peyrol sat alert and attentive like a man interested in an experiment, while after a moment Symons' face

began to look as if he had been hit with a club again, but not as hard as before. A film came over his round

eyes and the words ``fishy mariners'' made their way out of his lips in a sort of deathbed voice. Yet such

was the hardness of his head that he actually rallied enough to address Peyrol in an ingratiating tone.

``Come, grandfather!'' He tried to push the mug across the table and upset it. ``Come! Let us finish what's in

``No,'' said Peyrol, drawing the demijohn to his side of the table and putting the cork in.

``No?'' repeated Symons in an unbelieving voice and looking at the demijohn fixedly . . . ``You must be a

tinker'' . . . He tried to say something more under Peyrol's watchful eyes, failed once or twice, and suddenly

pronounced the word ``cochon'' so correctly as to make old Peyrol start. After that it was no use looking at

him any more. Peyrol busied himself in locking up the demijohn and the mugs. When he turned round most

of his prisoner's body was extended over the table and no sound came from it, not even a snore.

When Peyrol got outside, pulling to the door of the cuddy behind him, Michel hastened from forward to

receive the master's orders. But Peyrol stood so long on the afterdeck meditating profoundly with his hand

over his mouth that Michel became fidgety and ventured a cheerful: ``It looks as if he were not going to die.''

``He is dead,'' said Peyrol with grim jocularity. ``Dead drunk. And you very likely will not see me till

``Nothing,'' said Peyrol. ``Of course you must not let him set fire to the tartane.''

``If you see him trying to escape,'' said Peyrol with mock solemnity, ``then, Michel, it will be a sign for you

to get out of his way as quickly as you can. A man who would try to escape with a head like this on him

He picked up his cudgel and, stepping ashore, went off without as much as a look at his faithful henchman.

Michel listened to him scrambling amongst the stones, and his habitual amiably vacant face acquired a sort of

It was only after reaching the level ground in front of the farmhouse that Peyrol took time to pause and

While he had been closeted with his prisoner the sky had got covered with a thin layer of cloud, in one of

those swift changes of weather that are not unusual in the Mediterranean. This grey vapour, drifting high up,

close against the disc of the sun, seemed to enlarge the space behind its veil, add to the vastness of a

shadowless world no longer hard and brilliant but all softened in the contours of its masses and in the faint

Familiar and indifferent to his eyes, material and shadowy, the extent of the changeable sea had gone pale

under the pale sun in a mysterious and emotional response. Mysterious too was the great oval patch of dark

water to the west; and also a broad blue lane traced on the dull silver of the waters in a parabolic curve

described magistrally by an invisible finger for a symbol of endless wandering. The face of the farmhouse

might have been the face of a house from which all the inhabitants had fled suddenly. In the high part of the

building the window of the lieutenant's room remained open, both glass and shutter. By the door of the salle

the stable fork leaning against the wall seemed to have been forgotten by the sansculotte. This aspect of

abandonment struck Peyrol with more force than usual. He had been thinking so hard of all these people, that

to find no one about seemed unnatural and even depressing. He had seen many abandoned places in his life,

grass huts, mud forts, kings' palacestemples from which every whiterobed soul had fled. Temples,

however, never looked quite empty. The gods clung to their own. Peyrol's eyes rested on the bench against

the wall of the salle. In the usual course of things it should have been occupied by the lieutenant who had the

habit of sitting there with hardly a movement, for hours, like a spider watching for the coming of a fly. This

paralyzing comparison held Peyrol motionless with a twisted mouth and a frown on his brow, before the

evoked vision, coloured and precise, of the man more troubling than the reality had ever been.

He came to himself with a start. What sort of occupation was this, 'cre nom de nom, staring at a silly bench

with no one on it? Was he going wrong in his head? Or was it that he was getting really old? He had noticed

old men losing themselves like that. But he had something to do. First of all he had to go and see what the

While he was making his way towards the lookout on the hill where the inclined pine hung peering over the

cliff as if an insatiable curiosity were holding it in that precarious position, Peyrol had another view from

above of the farmyard and of the buildings and was again affected by their deserted appearance. Not a soul,

not even an animal seemed to have been left; only on the roofs the pigeons walked with smart elegance.

Peyrol hurried on and presently saw the English ship well over on the Porquerolles side with her yards braced

tip and her head to the southward. There was a little wind in the Passe, while the dull silver of the open had a

darkling rim of rippled water far away to the cast in that quarter where, far or near, but mostly out of sight,

the British Fleet kept its endless watch. Not a shadow of a spar or gleam of sail on the horizon betrayed its

presence; but Peyrol would not have been surprised to see a crowd of ships surge up, people the horizon with

hostile life, come in running, and dot the sea with their ordered groups all about Cape Cicie, parading their

damned impudence. Then indeed that corvette, the big factor of everyday life on that stretch of coast, would

become very small potatoes indeed; and the man in command of her (he had been Peyrol's personal adversary

in many imaginary encounters fought to a finish in the room upstairs) then indeed that Englishman would

have to mind his steps. He would be ordered to come within hail of the Admiral, be sent here and there, made

to run like a little dog and as likely as not get called on board the flagship and get a dressing down for

Peyrol thought for a moment that the impudence of this Englishman was going to take the form of running

along the peninsula and looking into the very cove; for the corvette's head was falling off slowly. A fear for

his tartane clutched Peyrol's heart till he remembered that the Englishman did not know of her existence. Of

course not. His cudgel had been absolutely effective in stopping that bit of information. The only Englishman

who knew of the existence of the tartane was that fellow with the broken head. Peyrol actually laughed at his

momentary scare. Moreover, it was evident that the Englishman did not mean to parade in front of the

peninsula. He did not mean to be impudent. The sloop's yards were swung right round and she came again to

the wind but now heading to the northward back from where she came. Peyrol saw at once that the

Englishman meant to pass to windward of Cape Esterel, probably with the intention of anchoring for the

night off the long white beach which in a regular curve closes the roadstead of Hyeres on that side.

Peyrol pictured her to himself, on the clouded night, not so very dark since the fall moon was but a day old,

lying at anchor within hail of the low shore, with her sails furled and looking profoundly asleep, but with the

watch on deck lying by the guns. He gnashed his teeth. It had come to this at last, that the captain of the

Amelia could do nothing with his ship without putting Peyrol into a rage. Oh, for forty Brothers, or sixty,

picked ones, he thought, to teach the fellow what it might cost him taking liberties along the French coast!

Ships had been carried by surprise before, on nights when there was just light enough to see the whites of

each other's eyes in a close tussle. And what would be the crew of that Englishman? Something between

ninety and a hundred altogether, boys and landsman included. ... Peyrol shook his fist for a goodbye, just

when Cape Esterel shut off the English sloop from his sight. But in his heart of hearts that seaman of

cosmopolitan associations knew very well that no forty or sixty, not any given hundred Brothers of the Coast

would have been enough to capture that corvette making herself at home within ten miles of where he had

He shook his head dismally at the leaning pine, his only companion. The disinherited soul of that rover

ranging for so many years a lawless ocean with the coasts of two continents for a raiding ground, had come

back to its crag, circling like a seabird in the dusk and longing for a great sea victory for its people: that

inland multitude of which Peyrol knew nothing except the few individuals on that peninsula cut off from the

rest of the land by the dead water of a salt lagoon; and where only a strain of manliness in a miserable cripple

and an unaccountable charm of a halfcrazed woman had found response in his heart.

This scheme of false dispatches was but a detail in a plan for a great, a destructive victory. just a detail, but

not a trifle all the same. Nothing connected with the deception of an admiral could be called trifling. And

such an admiral too. It was, Peyrol felt vaguely, a scheme that only a confounded landsman would invent. It

behoved the sailors, however, to make a workable thing of it. It would have to be worked through that

And here Peyrol was brought up by the question that all his life had not been able to settle for him and

that was whether the English were really very stupid or very acute. That difficulty had presented itself with

every fresh case. The old rover had enough genius in him to have arrived at a general conclusion that if they

were to be deceived at all it could not be done very well by words but rather by deeds; not by mere wriggling,

but by deep craft concealed under some sort of straightforward action. That conviction, however, did not take

him forward in this case, which was one in which much thinking would be necessary.

The Amelia had disappeared behind Cape Esterel, and Peyrol wondered with a certain anxiety whether this

meant that the Englishman had given up his man for good. ``If he has,'' said Peyrol to himself, ``I am bound

to see him pass out again from beyond Cape Esterel before it gets dark.'' If, however, he did not see the ship

again within the next hour or two, then she would be anchored off the beach, to wait for the night before

making some attempt to discover what had become of her man. This could be done only by sending out one

or two boats to explore the coast, and no doubt to enter the coveperhaps even to land a small search party.

After coming to this conclusion Peyrol began deliberately to charge his pipe. Had he spared a moment for a

glance inland he might have caught a whisk of a black skirt, the gleam of a white fichu Arlette running

down the faint track leading from Escampobar to the village in the hollow; the same track in fact up which

Citizen Scevola, while indulging in the strange freak to visit the church, had been chased by the incensed

faithful. But Peyrol, while charging and lighting his pipe, had kept his eyes fastened on Cape Esterel. Then,

throwing his arm affectionately over the trunk of the pine, he had settled himself to watch. Far below him the

roadstead, with its play of grey and bright gleams, looked like a plaque of motherofpearl in a frame of

yellow rocks and dark green ravines set off inland by the masses of the hills displaying the tint of the finest

purple; while above his head the sun, behind a cloudveil, hung like a silver disc.

That afternoon, after waiting in vain for Lieutenant Real to appear outside in the usual way, Arlette, the

mistress of Escampobar, had gone unwillingly into the kitchen where Catherine sat upright in a heavy

capacious wooden armchair, the back of which rose above the top of her white muslin cap. Even in her old

age, even in her hours of ease, Catherine preserved the upright carriage of the family that had held

Escampobar for so many generations. It would have been easy to believe that, like some characters famous in

the world, Catherine would have wished to die standing up and with unbowed shoulders.

With her sense of hearing undecayed she detected the light footsteps in the salle long before Arlette entered

the kitchen. That woman, who had faced alone and unaided (except for her brother's comprehending silence)

the anguish of passion in a forbidden love, and of terrors comparable to those of the judgment Day, neither

turned her face, quiet without serenity, nor her eyes, fearless but without fire, in the direction of her niece.

Arlette glanced on all sides, even at the walls, even at the mound of ashes under the big overmantel, nursing

in its heart a spark of fire, before she sat down and leaned her elbow on the table.

``You wander about like a soul in pain,'' said her aunt, sitting by the hearth like an old queen on her throne.

``Formerly,'' remarked Catherine, ``old women like me could always go over their prayers, but now . . .''

``I believe you have not been to church for years. I remember Scevola telling me that a long time ago. Was it

because you didn't like people's eyes? I have fancied sometimes that most people in the world must have been

Catherine turned her face away. Arlette rested her head on her halfclosed hand, and her eyes, losing their

steadiness, began to tremble amongst cruel visions. She got up suddenly and caressed the thin, halfaverted,

withered cheek with the tips of her fingers, and in a low voice, with that marvellous cadence that plucked at

In her immobilitv the old woman called with all the might of her will for the presence of Peyrol. She had

never been able to shake off a superstitious fear of that niece restored to her from the terrors of a Judgment

Day in which the world had been given over to the devils. She was always afraid that this girl, wandering

about with restless eyes and a dim smile on her silent lips, would suddenly say something atrocious, unfit to

be heard, calling for vengeance from heaven, unless Peyrol were by. That stranger come from ``par dela les

mers'' was out of it altogether, cared probably for no one in the world but had struck her imagination by his

massive aspect, his deliberation suggesting a mighty force like the reposeful attitude of a lion. Arlette

desisted from caressing the irresponsive cheek, exclaimed petulantly: ``I am awake now!'' and went out of the

kitchen without having asked her aunt the question she had meant to ask, which was whether she knew what

Her heart had failed her. She let herself drop on the bench outside the door of the salle. ``What is the matter

with them all?'' she thought. ``I can't make them out. What wonder is it that I have not been able to sleep?''

Even Peyrol, so different from all mankind, who from the first moment when he stood before her had the

power to soothe her aimless unrest, even Peyrol would now sit for hours with the lieutenant on the bench,

gazing into the air and keeping him in talk about things without sense, as if on purpose to prevent him from

thinking of her. Well, he could not do that. But the enormous change implied in the fact that every day had a

tomorrow now, and that all the people around her had ceased to be mere phantoms for her wandering

glances to glide over without concern, made her feel the need of support from somebody, from somewhere.

She sprang up and walked along the whole front of the farm building. At the end of the wall enclosing the

orchard she called out in a modulated undertone: ``Eugene,'' not because she hoped that the lieutenant was

anywhere within earshot, but for the pleasure of hearing the sound of the name uttered for once above a

whisper. She turned about and at the end of the wall on the yard side she repeated her call, drinking in the

sound that came from her lips, ``Eugene, Eugene,'' with a sort of halfexulting despair. It was in such dizzy

moments that she wanted a steadying support. But all was still. She heard no friendly murmur, not even a

sigh. Above her head under the thin grey sky a big mulberry tree stirred no leaf. Step by step, as if

unconsciously, she began to move down the track. At the end of fifty yards she opened the inland view, the

roofs of the village between the green tops of the platanes overshadowing the fountain, and just beyond the

flat bluegrey level of the salt lagoon, smooth and dull like a slab of lead. But what drew her on was the

churchtower, where, in a round arch, she could see the black speck of the bell which escaping the

requisitions of the Republican wars, and dwelling mute above the lockedup empty church, had only lately

recovered its voice. She ran on, but when she had come near enough to make out the figures moving about

the village fountain, she checked herself, hesitated a moment and then took the footpath leading to the

She pushed open the little gate with the broken latch. The humble building of rough stones, from between

which much mortar had crumbled out, looked as though it had been sinking slowly into the ground. The beds

of the plot in front were choked with weeds, because the abbe had no taste for gardening. When the heiress of

Escampobar opened the door, he was walking up and down the largest room which was his bedroom and

sitting room and where he also took his meals. He was a gaunt man with a long, as if convulsed, face. In his

young days he had been tutor to the sons of a great noble, but he did not emigrate with his employer. Neither

did he submit to the Republic. He had lived in his native land like a hunted wild beast, and there had been

many tales of his activities, warlike and others. When the hierarchy was reestablished he found no favour in

the eyes of his superiors. He had remained too much of a Royalist. He had accepted, without a word, the

charge of this miserable parish, where he had acquired influence quickly enough. His sacerdotalism lay in

him like a cold passion. Though accessible enough, he never walked abroad without his breviary,

acknowledging the solemnly bared heads by a curt nod. He was not exactly feared, but some of the oldest

inhabitants who remembered the previous incumbent, an old man who died in the garden after having been

dragged out of bed by some patriots anxious to take him to prison in Hyeres, jerked their heads sideways in a

On seeing this apparition in an Arlesian cap and silk skirt, a white fichu, and otherwise as completely

different as any princess could be from the rustics with whom he was in daily contact, his face expressed the

blankest astonishment. Thenfor he knew enough of the gossip of his communityhis straight, thick

eyebrows came together inimically. This was no doubt the woman of whom he had heard his parishioners

talk with bated breath as having given herself and her property up to a Jacobin, a Toulon sansculotte who

had either delivered her parents to execution or had murdered them himself during the first three days of

massacres. No one was very sure which it was, but the rest was current knowledge. The abbe, though

persuaded that any amount of moral turpitude was possible in a godless country, had not accepted all that tale

literally. No doubt those people were republican and impious, and the state of affairs up there was scandalous

and horrible. He struggled with his feelings of repulsion and managed to smooth his brow and waited. He

could not imagine what that woman with mature form and a youthful face could want at the presbytery.

Suddenly it occurred to him that perhaps she wanted to thank himit was a very old occurrencefor

interposing between the fury of the villagers and that man. He couldn't call him, even in his thoughts, her

husband, for apart from all other circumstances, that connection could not imply any kind of marriage to a

priest, even had there been legal form observed. His visitor was apparently disconcerted by the expression of

his face, the austere aloofness of his attitude, and only a low murmur escaped her lips. He bent his head and

She nodded slightly, and the abbe went to the door she had left half open and looked out. There was not a

soul in sight between the presbytery and the village, or between the presbytery and the church. He went back

``We are as alone as we can well be. The old woman in the kitchen is as deaf as a post.''

Now that he had been looking at Arlette closer the abbe felt a sort of dread. The carmine of those lips, the

pellucid, unstained, unfathomable blackness of those eyes, the pallor of her cheeks, suggested to him

something provokingly pagan, something distastefully different from the common sinners of this earth. And

``Wait,'' he said. ``I have never seen you before. I don't even know properly who you are. None of you belong

to my flockfor you are from Escampobar. are you not?'' Sombre under their bony arches, his eyes

fastened on her face, noticed the delicacy of features, the naive pertinacity of her stare. She said:

She said a little impatiently: ``By that rabble?'' and the priest remained mute for a moment. ``What do they

say? In my father's time they wouldn't have dared to say anything. The only thing I saw of them for years and

The absence of scorn in her tone was perfectly annihilating. Gentle sounds flowed from her lips and a

disturbing charm from her strange equanimity. The abbe frowned heavily at these fascinations, which seemed

``They are simple souls, neglected, fallen back into darkness. It isn't their fault. They have natural feelings of

humanity which were outraged. I saved him from their indignation. There are things that must be left to

``That man whose name you have just pronounced and which I have heard coupled with the epithet of

`blooddrinker' is regarded as the master of Escampobar Farm. He has been living there for years. How is

``Yes, it is a long time ago since he brought me back to the house. Years ago. Catherine let him stay.''

``She is my father's sister who was left at home to wait. She had given up all hope of seeing any of us again,

when one morning Scevola came with me to the door. Then she let him stay. He is a poor creature. What else

could Catherine have done? And what is it to us up there how the people in the village regard him?'' She

dropped her eyes and seemed to fall into deep thought, then added, ``It was only later that I discovered that he

was a poor creature, even quite lately. They call him 'blooddrinker,' do they? What of that? All the time he

``You are no longer a child,'' began the abbe in a severe voice, frowning at her downcast eyes, and he heard a

murmur: ``Not very long.'' He disregarded it and continued: ``I ask you, is this all that you have to tell me

``Monsieur l'Abbe,'' she said, raising her eyes fearlessly, ``what more am I to tell you about him? I can tell

you things that will make your hair stand on end, but it wouldn't be about him.''

For all answer the abbe made a weary gesture and turned away to walk up and down the room. His face

expressed neither curiosity nor pity, but a sort of repugnance which he made an effort to overcome. He

dropped into a deep and shabby old armchair, the only object of luxury in the room, and pointed to a wooden

straightbacked stool. Arlette sat down on it and began to speak. The abbe listened, but looking far away; his

big bony hands rested on the arms of the chair. After the first words he interrupted her: ``This is your own

He bent his head a little, without, however, ceasing to look far away. Her voice now was very low. Suddenly

``No, because that has brought me back to myself. Nothing else could have done it.''

He turned his head to look at her grimly, but he said nothing and looked away again. He listened. At the

beginning he muttered once or twice, ``Yes, I have heard that,'' and then kept silent, not looking at her at all.

Once he interrupted her by a question: ``You were confirmed before the convent was forcibly entered and the

``Yes, the other girls had their relations near by. They took me with them thinking to communicate with my

parents, but it was difficult. Then the English came and my parents sailed over to try and get some news of

me. It was safe for my father to be in Toulon then. Perhaps you think that he was a traitor to his country?'' she

asked, and waited with parted lips. With an impassible face the abbe murmured: ``He was a good Royalist,''

in a tone of bitter fatalism, which seemed to absolve that man and all the other men of whose actions and

For a long time, Arlette continued, her father could not discover the house where the nuns had taken refuge.

He only obtained some information on the very day before the English evacuated Toulon. Late in the day he

appeared before her and took her away. The town was full of retreating foreign troops. Her father left her

with her mother and went out again to make preparations for sailing home that very night; but the tartane was

no longer in the place where he had left her lying. The two Madrague men that he had for a crew had

disappeared also. Thus the family was trapped in that town full of tumult and confusion. Ships and houses

were bursting into flames. Appalling explosions of gunpowder shook the earth. She spent that night on her

knees with her face hidden in her mother's lap, while her father kept watch by the barricaded door with a

In the morning the house was filled with savage yells. People were heard rushing up the stairs, and the door

was burst in. She jumped up at the crash and flung herself down on her knees in a corner with her face to the

wall. There was a murderous uproar, she heard two shots fired, then somebody seized her by the arm and

pulled her up to her feet. It was Scevola. He dragged her to the door. The bodies of her father and mother

were lying across the doorway. The room was full of gunpowder smoke. She wanted to fling herself on the

bodies and cling to them, but Scevola took her under the arms and lifted her over them. He seized her hand

and made her run with him, or rather dragged her downstairs. Outside on the pavement some dreadful men

and many fierce women with knives joined them. They ran along the streets brandishing pikes and sabres,

pursuing other groups of unarmed people, who fled round corners with loud shrieks.

``I ran in the midst of them, Monsieur l'Abbe,'' Arlette went on in a breathless murmur. ``Whenever I saw any

water I wanted to throw myself into it, but I was surrounded on all sides, I was jostled and pushed and most

of the time Scevola held my hand very tight. When they stopped at a wine shop, they would offer me some

wine. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I drank. The wine, the pavements, the arms and faces,

everything was red. I had red splashes all over me. I had to run with them all day, and all the time I felt as if I

were falling down, and down, and down. The houses were nodding at me. The sun would go out at times.

And suddenly I heard myself yelling exactly like the others. Do you understand, Monsieur I'Abbe? The very

The eyes of the priest in their deep orbits glided towards her and then resumed their faraway fixity. Between

his fatalism and his faith he was not very far from the belief of Satan taking possession of rebellious

mankind, exposing the nakedness of hearts like flint and of the homicidal souls of the Revolution.

She affirmed with quiet earnestness: ``Yet at that time I resisted with all my might.''

That night Scevola put her under the care of a woman called Perose. She was young and pretty and was a

native of Arles, her mother's country. She kept an inn. That woman locked her up in her own room, which

was next to the room where the patriots kept on shouting, singing and making speeches far into the night.

Several times the woman would look in for a moment, make a hopeless gesture at her with both arms, and

vanish again. Later, on many other nights when all the band lay asleep on benches and on the floor, Perose

would steal into the room, fall on her knees by the bed on which Arlette sat upright, openeyed, and raving

silently to herself, embrace her feet and cry herself to sleep. But in the morning she would jump up briskly

and say: ``Come. The great affair is to keep our life in our bodies. Come along to help in the work of justice'';

and they would join the band that was making ready for another day of traitor hunting. But after a time the

victims, of which the streets were full at first, had to be sought for in backyards, ferreted out of their

hidingplaces, dragged up out of the cellars, or down from the garrets of the houses, which would be entered

``Then, Monsieur l'Abbe,'' said Arlette, ``I let myself go at last. I could resist no longer. I said to myself. `If it

is so then it must be right.' But most of the time I was like a person half asleep and dreaming things that it is

impossible to believe. About that time, I don't know why, the woman Perose hinted to me that Scevola was a

poor creature. Next night while all the band lay fast asleep in the big room Perose and Scevola helped me out

of the window into the street and led me to the quay behind the arsenal. Scevola had found our tartane lying

at the pontoon and one of the Madrague men with her. The other had disappeared. Perose fell on my neck and

cried a little. She gave me a kiss and said: ``My time will come soon. You, Scevola, don't you show yourself

in Toulon, because nobody believes in you any more. Adieu, Arlette. Vive la Nation!'' and she vanished in the

night. I waited on the pontoon shivering in my torn clothes, listening to Scevola and the man throwing dead

bodies overboard out of the tartane. Splash, splash, splash. And suddenly I felt I must run away, but they

were after me in a moment, dragged me back and threw me down into that cabin which smelt of blood. But

when I got back to the farm all feeling had left me. I did not feel myself exist. I saw things round me here and

there, but I couldn't look at anything for long. Something was gone out of me. 1 know now that it was not my

heart, but then I didn't mind what it was. I felt light and empty, and a little cold all the time, but I could smile

at people. Nothing could matter. Nothing could mean anything. I cared for no one. I wanted nothing. I wasn't

alive at all, Monsieur l'Abbe. People seemed to see me and would talk to me, and it seemed funnytill one

``Why precisely did you come to me with this tale?'' asked the abbe in a low voice.

``Because you are a priest. Have you forgotten that I have been brought up in a convent? I have not forgotten

``Repent!'' thundered the abbe, getting up. He saw her candid gaze uplifted and lowered his voice forcibly.

``You must look with fearless sincerity into the darkness of your soul. Remember whence the only true help

can come. Those whom God has visited by a trial such as yours can not be held guiltless of their enormities.

Withdraw from the world. Descend within yourself and abandon the vain thoughts of what people call

happiness. Be an example to yourself of the sinfulness of our nature and of the weakness of our humanity.

You may have been possessed. What do I know? Perhaps it was permitted in order to lead your soul to

saintliness through a life of seclusion and prayer. To that it would be my duty to help you. Meantime you

Arlette, lowering her eyes slowly, appealed to the abbe as a symbolic figure of spiritual mystery. ``What can

``Monsieur le Cure,'' she said quietly, ``I felt the need to pray today for the first time in many years. When I

``I know. But I would have had to pass before all those villagers: and you, abbe, know well what they are

``Perhaps,'' murmured the abbe, ``it would be better not to put their charity to the test.''

``I must pray before I go back again. I thought you would let me come in through the sacristy.''

``It would be inhuman to refuse your request,'' he said, rousing himself and taking down a key that hung on

the wall. He put on his broadbrimmed hat and without a word led the way through the wicket gate and along

the path which he always used himself and which was out of sight of the village fountain. After they had

entered the damp and dilapidated sacristy he locked the door behind them and only then opened another, a

smaller one, leading into the church. When he stood aside, Arlette became aware of the chilly odour as of

freshly turnedup earth mingled with a faint scent of incense. In the deep dusk of the nave a single little

flame glimmered before an image of the virgin. The abbe whispered as she passed on:

``There before the great altar abase yourself and pray for grace and strength and mercy in this world full of

She did not look at him. Through the thin soles of her shoes she could feel the chill of the flagstones. The

abbe left the door ajar, sat down on a rushbottomed chair, the only one in the sacristy, folded his arms and

let his chin fall on his breast. He seemed to be sleeping profoundly, but at the end of half an hour he got up

and, going to the doorway, stood looking at the kneeling figure sunk low on the altar steps. Arlette's face was

buried in her hands in a passion of piety and prayer. The abbe waited patiently for a good many minutes

more, before he raised his voice in a grave murmur which filled the whole dark place.

The view of her complete absorption before the Most High had touched him. He stepped back into the

sacristy and after a time heard the faintest possible swish of the black silk skirt of the Escampobar daughter in

her Arlesian costume. She entered the sacristy lightly with shining eyes, and the abbe looked at her with some

``You have prayed well, my daughter,'' he said. ``No forgiveness will be refused to you, for you have suffered

She raised her head and stayed her footsteps for a moment. In the dark little place he could see the gleam of

``Yes, Monsieur l'Abbe,'' she said in her clear seductive voice. ``I have prayed and I feel answered. I

entreated the merciful God to keep the heart of the man I love always true to me or else to let me die before I

The abbe paled under his tan of a village priest and leaned his shoulders against the wall without a word.

After leaving the church by the sacristy door Arlette never looked back. The abbe saw her flit past the

presbytery, and the building hid her from his sight. He did not accuse her of duplicity. He had deceived

himself. A heathen. White as her skin was, the blackness of her hair and of her eyes, the dusky red of her lips,

Arlette walked rapidly towards Escampobar as if she could not get there soon enough; but as she neared the

first enclosed field her steps became slower and after hesitating awhile she sat down between two olive trees,

near a wall bordered by a growth of thin grass at the foot. ``And if I have been possessed,'' she argued to

herself, ``as the abbe said, what is it to me as I am now? That evil spirit cast my true self out of my body and

then cast away the body too. For years I have been living empty. There has been no meaning in anything.''

But now her true self had returned matured in its mysterious exile, hopeful and eager for love. She was

certain that it had never been far away from that outcast body which Catherine had told her lately was fit for

no man's arms. That was all that old woman knew about it, thought Arlette, not in scorn but rather in pity.

She knew better, she had gone to heaven for truth in that long prostration with its ardent prayers and its

She knew its meaning well, and also the meaning of anotherof a terrestrial revelation which had come to

her that day at noon while she waited on the lieutenant. Everybody else was in the kitchen; she and Real were

as much alone together as had ever happened to them in their lives. That day she could not deny herself the

delight to be near him, to watch him covertly, to hear him perhaps utter a few words, to experience that

strange satisfying consciousness of her own existence which nothing but Real's presence could give her; a

sort of unimpassioned but allabsorbing bliss, warmth, courage, confidence! . . . She backed away from

Real's table, seated herself facing him and cast down her eyes. There was a great stillness in the salle except

for the murmur of the voices in the kitchen. She had at first stolen a glance or two and then peeping again

through her eyelashes, as it were, she saw his eyes rest on her with a peculiar meaning. This had never

happened before. She jumped up, thinking that he wanted something, and while she stood in front of him

with her hand resting on the table he stooped suddenly, pressed it to the table with his lips and began kissing

it passionately without a sound, endlessly. . . . More startled than surprised at first, then infinitely happy, she

was beginning to breathe quickly, when he left off and threw himself back in the chair. She walked away

from the table and sat down again to gaze at him openly, steadily, without a smile. But he was not looking at

her. His passionate lips were set hard now and his face had an expression of stern despair. No word passed

between them. Brusquely he got up with averted eyes and went outside, leaving the food before him

In the usual course of things, on any other day, she would have got up and followed him, for she had always

yielded to the fascination that had first roused her faculties. She would have gone out just to pass in front of

him once or twice. But this time she had not obeyed what was stronger than fascination, something within

herself which at the same time prompted and restrained her. She only raised her arm and looked at her hand.

It was true. It had happened. He had kissed it. Formerly she cared not how gloomy he was as long as he

remained somewhere where she could look at himwhich she would do at every opportunity with an open

and unbridled innocence. But now she knew better than to do that. She had got up, had passed through the

kitchen, meeting without embarrassment Catherine's inquisitive glance, and had gone upstairs. When she

came down after a time, he was nowhere to be seen, and everybody else too seemed to have gone into hiding;

Michel, Peyrol, Scevola . . . But if she had met Scevola she would not have spoken to him. It was now a very

long time since she had volunteered a conversation with Scevola. She guessed, however, that Scevola had

simply gone to lie down in his lair, a narrow shabby room lighted by one glazed little window high up in the

end wall. Catherine had put him in there on the very day he had brought her niece home and he had retained it

for his own ever since. She could even picture him to herself in there stretched on his pallet. She was capable

of that now. Formerly, for years after her return, people that were out of her sight were out of her mind also.

Had they run away and left her she would not have thought of them at all. She would have wandered in and

out of the empty house and round the empty fields without giving anybody a thought. Peyrol was the first

human being she had noticed for years. Peyrol, since he had come, had always existed for her. And as a

matter of fact the rover was generally very much in evidence about the farm. That afternoon, however, even

Peyrol was not to be seen. Her uneasiness began to grow, but she felt a strange reluctance to go into the

kitchen where she knew her aunt would be sitting in the armchair like a presiding genius of the house taking

its rest, and unreadable in her immobility. And yet she felt she must talk about Real to somebody. This was

how the idea of going down to the church had come to her. She would talk of him to the priest and to God.

The force of old associations asserted itself. She had been taught to believe that one could tell everything to a

priest, and that the omnipotent God who know everything could be prayed to, asked for grace, for strength,

for mercy, for protection, for pity. She had done it and felt she had been heard.

Her heart had quietened down while she rested under the wall. Pulling out a long stalk of grass she twined it

round her fingers absently. The veil of cloud had thickened over her head, early dusk had descended upon the

earth, and she had not found out what had become of Real. She jumped to her feet wildly. But directly she

had done that she felt the need of selfcontrol. It was with her usual light step that she approached the front

of the house and for the first time in her life perceived how barren and sombre it looked when Real was not

about. She slipped in quietly through the door of the main building and ran upstairs. It was dark on the

landing. She passed by the door leading into the room occupied by her aunt and herself. It had been her father

and mother's bedroom. The other big room was the lieutenant's during his visits to Escampobar. Without even

a rustle of her dress, like a shadow, she glided along the passage, turned the handle without noise and went in.

After shutting the door behind her she listened. There was no sound in the house. Scevola was either already

down in the yard or still lying openeyed on his tumbled pallet in raging sulks about something. She had

once accidentally caught, him at it, down on his face, one eye and cheek of which were buried in the pillow,

the other eye glaring savagely, and had been scared away by a thick mutter: ``Keep off. Don't approach me.''

Having ascertained that the inside of the house was as still as the grave, Arlette walked across to the window,

which when the lieutenant was occupying the room stood always open and with the shutter pushed right back

against the wall. It was of course uncurtained, and as she came near to it Arlette caught sight of Peyrol

coming down the hill on his return from the lookout. His white head gleamed like silver against the slope of

the ground and by and by passed out of her sight, while her ear caught the sound of his footsteps below the

window. They passed into the house, but she did not hear him come upstairs. He had gone into the kitchen.

To Catherine. They would talk about her and Eugene. But what would they say? She was so new to life that

everything appeared dangerous: talk, attitudes, glances. She felt frightened at the mere idea of silence

between those two. It was possible. Suppose they didn't say anything to each other. That would be awful.

Yet she remained calm like a sensible person, who knows that rushing about in excitement is not the way to

meet unknown dangers. She swept her eyes over the room and saw the lieutenant's valise in a corner. That

was really what she had wanted to see. He wasn't gone then. But it didn't tell her, though she opened it, what

had become of him. As to his return, she had no doubt whatever about that. He had always returned. She

noticed particularly a large packet sewn up in sailcloth and with three large red seals on the seam. It didn't,

however, arrest her thoughts. Those were still hovering about Catherine and Peyrol downstairs. How changed

they were. Had they ever thought that she was mad? She became indignant. ``How could I have prevented

that?'' she asked herself with despair. She sat down on the edge of the bed in her usual attitude, her feet

crossed, her hands lying in her lap. She felt on one of them the impress off Real's lips, soothing, reassuring

like every certitude, but she was aware of a still remaining confusion in her mind, an indefinite weariness like

the strain of an imperfect vision trying to discern shifting outlines, floating shapes, incomprehensible signs.

She could not resist the temptation of resting her tired body, just for a little while.

She lay down on the very edge of the bed, the kissed hand tucked under her cheek. The faculty of thinking

abandoned her altogether, but she remained openeyed, wide awake. In that position, without hearing the

slightest sound, she saw the door handle move down as far as it would go, perfectly noiseless, as though the

lock had been oiled not long before. Her impulse was to leap right out into the middle of the room, but she

restrained herself and only swung herself into a sitting posture. The bed had not creaked. She lowered her feet

gently to the ground, and by the time when holding her breath she put her ear against the door, the handle had

come back into position. She had detected no sound outside. Not the faintest. Nothing. It never occurred to

her to doubt her own eyes, but the whole thing had been so noiseless that it could not have disturbed the

lightest sleeper. She was sure that had she been lying on her other side, that is with her back to the door, she

would have known nothing. It was some time before she walked away from the door and sat on a chair which

stood near a heavy and muchcarved table, an heirloom more appropriate to a chateau than to a farmhouse.

The dust of many months covered its smooth oval surface of dark, finely grained wood.

``It must have been Scevola,'' thought Arlette. It could have been no one else. What could he have wanted?

She gave herself up to thought, but really she did not care. The absent Real occupied all her mind. With an

unconscious slowness her finger traced in the dust on the table the initials E A and achieved a circle round

them. Then she jumped up, unlocked the door and went downstairs. In the kitchen, as she fully expected, she

found Scevola with the others. Directly she appeared he got up and ran upstairs, but returned almost

immediately looking as if he had seen a ghost, and when Peyrol asked him some insignificant question his

lips and even his chin trembled before he could command his voice. He avoided looking anybody in the face.

The others too seemed shy of meeting each other's eyes, and the evening meal of the Escampobar seemed

haunted by the absent lieutenant. Peyrol, besides, had his prisoner to think of. His existence presented a most

interesting problem, and the proceedings of the English ship were another, closely connected with it and full

of dangerous possibilities. Catherine's black and ungleaming eyes seemed to have sunk deeper in their

sockets, but her face wore its habitual severe aloofness of expression. Suddenly Scevola spoke as if in answer

Peyrol swallowed the piece of bread and butter which he had been masticating slowly, and asked:

``I am alluding to the republic,'' answered Scevola, in a more assured tone than usual. ``Moderation I say. We

patriots held our hand too soon. All the children of the cidevants and all the children of traitors should have

been killed together with their fathers and mothers. Contempt for civic virtues and love of tyranny were

inborn in them all. They grow up and trample on all the sacred principles. . . . The work of the Terror is

``What do you propose to do about it?'' growled Peyrol. ``No use declaiming here or anywhere for that

matter. You wouldn't find anybody to listen to youyou cannibal,'' he added in a goodhumoured tone.

Arlette, leaning her head on her left hand, was tracing with the forefinger of her right invisible initials on the

tablecloth. Catherine, stooping to light a fourbeaked oil lamp mounted on a brass pedestal, turned her

finely carved face over her shoulder. The sansculotte jumped up, flinging his arms about. His hair was

tousled from his sleepless tumbling on his pallet. The unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt flapped against his thin

hairy forearms. He no longer looked as though he had seen a ghost. He opened a wide black mouth, but

``No, no. The time when your own people up La Boyere waydon't they live up there?trembled at the

idea of you coming to visit them with a lot of patriot scallywags at your back is past. You have nobody at

your back; and if you started spouting like this at large, people would rise up and hunt you down like a mad

Scevola, who had shut his mouth, glanced over his shoulder, and as if impressed by his unsupported state

went out of the kitchen, reeling, like a man who had been drinking. He had drunk nothing but water. Peyrol

looked thoughtfully at the door which the indignant sansculotte had slammed after him. During the colloquy

between the two men, Arlette had disappeared into the salle. Catherine, straightening her long back, put the

oil lamp with its four smoky flames on the table. It lighted her face from below. Peyrol moved it slightly

``It was lucky for you,'' he said, gazing upwards, ``that Scevola hadn't even one other like himself when he

``Yes,'' she admitted. ``I had to face him alone from first to last. But can you see me between him and

Arlette? In those days he raved terribly, but he was dazed and tired out. Afterwards I recovered myself and I

could argue with him firmly. I used to say to him, `Look, she is so young and she has no knowledge of

herself.' Why, for months the only thing she would say that one could understand was `Look how it spurts,

look how it splashes!' He talked to me of his republican virtue. He was not a profligate. He could wait. She

was, he said, sacred to him, and things like that. He would walk up and down for hours talking of her and I

would sit there listening to him with the key of the room the child was locked in, in my pocket. I temporized,

and, as you say yourself, it was perhaps because he had no one at his back that he did not try to kill me, which

he might have done any day. I temporized. And after all, why should he want to kill me? He told me more

than once he was sure to have Arlette for his own. Many a time he made me shiver explaining why it must be

so. She owed her life to him. Oh! that dreadful crazy life. You know he is one of those men that can be

Peyrol nodded understandingly. ``Yes, some are like that. That kind is more impatient sometimes to spill

blood. Still I think that your life was one long narrow escape, at least till I turned up here.''

``Things had settled down, somehow,'' murmured Catherine. ``But all the same I was glad when you appeared

``Grey hairs will come to any sort of man,'' observed Peyrol acidly, ``and you did not know me. You don't

``There have been Peyrols living less than half a day's journey from here,'' observed Catherine in a

``That's all right,'' said the rover in such a peculiar tone that she asked him sharply: ``What's the matter?

``I have had many names and this was one of them. So this name and my grey hair pleased you, Catherine?

``I wasn't sorry to see you come. Scevola too, I believe. He heard that patriots were being hunted down, here

and there, and he was growing quieter every day. You roused the child wonderfully.''

``Before you came she never spoke to anybody unless first spoken to. She didn't seem to care where she was.

At the same time,'' added Catherine after a pause, ``she didn't care what happened to her either. Oh, I have

had some heavy hours thinking it all over, in the daytime doing my work, and at night while I lay awake,

listening to her breathing. And I growing older all the time, and, who knows, with my last hour ready to

strike. I often thought that when I felt it coming I would speak to you as I am speaking to you now.''

``Oh, you did think,'' said Peyrol in an undertone. ``Because of my grey hairs, I suppose.''

``Yes. And because you came from beyond the seas,'' Catherine said with unbending mien and in an

unflinching voice. ``Don't you know that the first time Arlette saw you she spoke to you and that it was the

first time I heard her speak of her own accord since she had been brought back by that man, and I had to wash

``It was like a miracle happening,'' said Catherine, ``and it was you that had done it.''

``Then it must be that some Indian witch has given me the power,'' muttered Peyrol, so low that Catherine

could not hear the words. But she did not seem to care, and presently went on again:

``And the child took to you wonderfully. Some sentiment was aroused in her at last.''

``Yes,'' assented Peyrol grimly. ``She did take to me. She learned to talk tothe old man.''

``It's something in you that seems to have opened her mind and unloosed her tongue,'' said Catherine,

speaking with a sort of regal composure down at Peyrol, like a chieftainess of a tribe. ``I often used to look

``She talked like a child,'' struck in Peyrol abruptly. ``And so you were going to speak to me before your last

``Listen, Peyrol. If anybody's last hour is near it isn't mine. You just look about you a little. It was time I

``Why, I am not going to kill anybody,'' muttered Peyrol. ``You are getting strange ideas into your head.''

``It is as I said,'' insisted Catherine without animation. ``Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has been

Peyrol, who had let his head fall on his breast, jerked it up suddenly. ``What on earth are you talking about?''

``You have not seen the state she was in when I got her back into my hands,'' remarked Catherine. . . . ``I

suppose you know where the lieutenant is. What made him go off like that? Where did he go to?''

``You know where he is! And of course you know why he has gone away and why he is coming back,''

pronounced Catherine in an ominous voice. ``Well, you had better tell him that unless he has a pair of eyes at

the back of his head he had better not return herenot return at all; for if he does, nothing can save him

``No man was ever safe from treachery,'' opined Peyrol after a moment's silence. ``I won't pretend not to

``You heard as well as I what Scevola said just before he went out. The lieutenant is the child of some

cidevant and Arlette of a man they called a traitor to his country. You can see yourself what was in his

``He is a chickenhearted spouter,'' said Peyrol contemptuously, but it did not affect Catherine's attitude of an

old sibyl risen from the tripod to prophesy calmly atrocious disasters. ``It's all his republicanism,'' commented

``No, that's jealousy,'' said Catherine. ``Maybe he has ceased to care for her in all these years. It is a long time

since he has left off worrying me. With a creature like that I thought that if I let him be master here . . . But

no! I know that after the lieutenant started coming here his awful fancies have come back. He is not sleeping

at night. His republicanism is always there. But don't you know, Peyrol, that there may be jealousy without

``You think so,'' said the rover profoundly. He pondered full of his own experience. ``And he has tasted blood

``I may be right,'' repeated Catherine in a slightly indignant tone. ``Every time I see Arlette near him I

tremble lest it should come to words and to a bad blow. And when they are both out of my sight it is still

worse. At this moment I am wondering where they are. They may be together and I daren't raise my voice to

``But it's the lieutenant he is after,'' observed Peyrol in a lowered voice. ``Well, I can't stop the lieutenant

``Where is she? Where is he?'' whispered Catherine in a tone betraying her secret anguish.

Peyrol rose quietly and went into the salle, leaving the door open. Catherine heard the latch of the outer door

being lifted cautiously. In a few moments Peyrol returned as quietly as he had gone out.

``I stepped out to look at the weather. The moon is about to rise and the clouds have thinned down. One can

see a star here and there.'' He lowered his voice considerably. ``Arlette is sitting on the bench humming a

little song to herself. I really wonder whether she knew I was standing within a few feet of her.''

``She doesn't want to hear or see anybody except one man,'' affirmed Catherine, now in complete control of

her voice. ``And she was humming a song, did you say? She who would sit for hours without making a

``Yes, there's a great change in her,'' admitted Peyrol with a heavy sigh. ``This lieutenant,'' he continued after

a pause, ``has always behaved coldly to her. I noticed him many times turn his face away when he saw her

coming towards us. You know what these epaulettewearers are, Catherine. And then this one has some

worm of his own that is gnawing at him. I doubt whether he has ever forgotten that he was a cidevant boy.

Yet I do believe that she does not want to see and hear anybody but him. Is it because she has been deranged

``No, Peyrol,'' said the old woman. ``It isn't that. You want to know how I can tell? For years nothing could

make her either laugh or cry. You know that yourself. You have seen her every day. Would you believe that

within the last month she has been both crying and laughing on my breast without knowing why?''

``But I do. That lieutenant has got only to whistle to make her run after him. Yes, Peyrol. That is so. She has

no fear, no shame, no pride. I myself have been nearly like that.'' Her fine brown face seemed to grow more

impassive before she went on much lower and as if arguing with herself: ``Only I at least was never

bloodmad. I was fit for any man's arms. . . . But then that man is not a priest.''

The last words made Peyrol start. He had almost forgotten that story. He said to himself: ``She knows, she

``Look here, Catherine,'' he said decisively, ``the lieutenant is coming back. He will be here probably about

midnight. But one thing I can tell you: he is not coming back to whistle her away. Oh, no! It is not for her

``Well, if it isn't for her that he is coming back then it must be because death has beckoned to him,'' she

announced in a tone of solemn unemotional conviction. ``A man who has received a sign from death

Peyrol, who had seen death face to face many times, looked at Catherine's fine brown profile curiously.

``It is a fact,'' he murmured, ``that men who rush out to seek death do not often find it. So one must have a

``How is anybody to know?'' asked Catherine, staring across the kitchen at the wall. ``Even those to whom it

is made do not recognize it for what it is. But they obey all the same. I tell you, Peyrol, nothing can stop

them. It may be a glance, or a smile, or a shadow on the water, or a thought that passes through the head. For

Peyrol folded his arms on his breast and dropped his head. Melancholy was a sentiment to which he was a

stranger; for what has melancholy to do with the life of a searover, a Brother of the Coast, a simple,

venturesome, precarious life, full of risks and leaving no time for introspection or for that momentary

selfforgetfulness which is called gaiety. Sombre fury, fierce merriment, he had known in passing gusts,

coming from outside; but never this intimate inward sense of the vanity of all things, that doubt of the power

``I wonder what the sign for me will be,'' he thought; and concluded with selfcontempt that for him there

would be no sign, that he would have to die in his bed like an old yard dog in his kennel. Having reached that

depth of despondency, there was nothing more before him but a black gulf into which his consciousness sank

The silence which had lasted perhaps a minute after Catherine had finished speaking was traversed suddenly

Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black and

penetrating glance. The surprise was complete. The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the table,

became if possible harder; a sharp carving of an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made three steps

forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment was deliberate. He had been famous for never looking as

though he had been caught unprepared. Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. He only slipped off

Arlette moved nearer still. ``I know,'' she cried. ``It was horrible. I have been watching you two. Scevola

came and dumped himself on the bench close to me. He began to talk to me, and so I went away. That man

bores me. And here I find you people saying nothing. It's insupportable. What has come to you both? Say,

you, Papa Peyroldon't you like me any more?'' Her voice filled the kitchen. Peyrol went to the salle door

and shut it. While coming back he was staggered by the brilliance of life within her that seemed to pale the

She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes, her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo and .

. . yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy like the light

of a distant flame on the snow. She raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall from on high on

Peyrol's shoulders, captured his desperately dodging eyes with her black and compelling glance, put out all

her instinctive seduction while he felt a growing fierceness in the grip of her fingers.

``No! I can't hold it in! Monsieur Peyrol, Papa Peyrol, old gunner, you horrid seawolf, be an angel and tell

The rover, whom only that morning the powerful grasp of Lieutenant Real found as unshakable as a rock, felt

``Truth is not for everybody to know,'' mumbled Peyrol, with a sinking sensation as though the very ground

Her hands slipped suddenly from his big shoulders. ``On service?'' she repeated. ``What service?'' Her voice

sank and the words ``Oh, yes! His service'' were hardly heard by Peyrol, who as soon as her hands had left his

shoulders felt his strength returning to him and the yielding earth grow firm again under his feet. Right in

front of him Arlette, silent, with her arms hanging down before her with entwined fingers, seemed stunned

because Lieutenant Real was not free from all earthly connections, like a visiting angel from heaven

depending only on God to whom she had prayed. She had to share him with some service that could order

``Peyrol,'' she cried low, ``don't break my heart, my new heart, that has just begun to beat. Feel how it beats.

Who could bear it?'' She seized the rover's thick hairy paw and pressed it hard against her breast. ``Tell me

``Listen, patronne, you had better go upstairs,'' began Peyrol with a great effort and snatching his captured

``You can't order me about as you used to do.'' In all the changes from entreaty to anger she never struck a

false note, so that her emotional outburst had the heartmoving power of inspired art. She turned round with

a tempestuous swish to Catherine who had neither stirred nor emitted a sound: ``Nothing you two can do will

make any difference now.'' The next moment she was facing Peyrol again. ``You frighten me with your white

The rover caught her under the elbows, swung her up clear of the ground, and set her down on her feet as if

``Are you stupid?'' she cried. ``Don't you understand that something has happened today?''

Through all this scene Peyrol had kept his head as creditably as could have been expected, in the manner of a

seaman caught by a white squall in the tropics. But at those words a dozen thoughts tried to rush together

through his mind, in chase of that startling declaration. Something had happened! Where? How? Whom to?

What thing? It couldn't be anything between her and the lieutenant. He had, it seemed to him, never lost sight

of the lieutenant from the first hour when they met in the morning till he had sent him off to Toulon by an

actual push on the shoulder; except while he was having his dinner in the next room with the door open, and

for the few minutes spent in talking with Michel in the yard. But that was only a very few minutes, and

directly afterwards the first sight of the lieutenant sitting gloomily on the bench like a lonely crow did not

suggest either elation or excitement or any emotion connected with a woman. In the face of these difficulties

Peyrol's mind became suddenly a blank. ``Voyons, patronne,'' he began, unable to think of anything else to

say. ``What's all this fuss about? I expect him to be back here about midnight.''

He was extremely relieved to notice that she believed him. It was the truth. For indeed he did not know what

he could have invented on the spur of the moment that would get her out of the way and induce her to go to

bed. She treated him to a sinister frown and a terribly menacing, ``If you have lied . . . Oh!''

He produced an indulgent smile. ``Compose yourself. He will be here soon after midnight. You may go to

She turned her back on him contemptuously, and said curtly, ``Come along, aunt,'' and went to the door

leading to the passage. There she turned for a moment with her hand on the door handle.

She went out. Only then did Catherine detach her gaze from the wall to meet Peyrol's eyes. ``Did you hear

Peyrol nodded twice and there was a long pause, during which even the flames of the lamp did not stir.

``Go after her, Mademoiselle Catherine,'' he said at last with a shade of sympathy in his tone. She did not

move. ``Allonsdu courage,'' he urged her deferentially as it were. ``Try to put her to sleep.''

Upright and deliberate, Catherine left the kitchen, and in the passage outside found Arlette waiting for her

with a lighted candle in her hand. Her heart was filled with sudden desolation by the beauty of that young

face enhaloed in the patch of light, with the profound darkness as of a dungeon for a background. At once her

niece led the way upstairs muttering savagely through her pretty teeth: ``He thinks I could go to sleep. Old

Peyrol did not take his eyes off Catherine's straight back till the door had closed after her. Only then he

relieved himself by letting the air escape through his pursed lips and rolling his eyes freely about. He picked

up the lamp by the ring on the top of the central rod and went into the salle, closing behind him the door of

the dark kitchen. He stood the lamp on the very table on which Lieutenant Real had had his midday meal. A

small white cloth was still spread on it and there was his chair askew as he had pushed it back when he got

up. Another of the many chairs in the salle was turned round conspicuously to face the table. These things

made Peyrol remark to himself bitterly: ``She sat and stared at him as if he had been gilt all over, with three

heads and seven arms on his body''a comparison reminiscent of certain idols he had seen in an Indian

temple. Though not an iconoclast, Peyrol felt positively sick at the recollection, and hastened to step outside.

The great cloud had broken up and the mighty fragments were moving to the westward in stately flight before

the rising moon. Scevola, who had been lying extended full length on the bench, swung himself up suddenly,

``Had a little nap in the open?'' asked Peyrol, letting his eyes roam through the luminous space under the

``I did not sleep,'' said the sansculotte. ``I haven't closed my eyesnot for one moment.''

``That must be because you weren't sleepy,'' suggested the deliberate Peyrol, whose thoughts were far away

with the English ship. His mental eye contemplated her black image against the white beach of the Salins

describing a sparkling curve under the moon, and meantime he went on slowly: ``For it could not have been

noise that kept you awake.'' On the level of Escampobar the shadows lay long on the ground while the side of

the lookout hill remained yet black but edged with an increasing brightness. And the amenity of the stillness

was such that if softened for a moment Peyrol's hard inward attitude towards all mankind, including even the

captain of the English ship. The old rover savoured a moment of serenity in the midst of his cares.

Peyrol, without turning his head, looked at him sideways. Though he had sprung up from his reclining

posture smartly enough, the citizen had gone slack all over and was sitting all in a heap. His shoulders were

hunched up, his hands reposed on his knees. With his staring eyes he resembled a sick child in the moonlight.

``It's the very spot for hatching treacheries. One feels steeped in them up to the neck.''

He shuddered and yawned a long irresistible nervous yawn with the gleam of unexpected long canines in a

``Oh, yes, there's treachery about right enough. You couldn't conceive that, citoyen?''

``Of course I couldn't,'' assented Peyrol with serene contempt. ``What is this treachery that you are

concocting?'' he added carelessly, in a social way, while enjoying the charm of a moonlit evening. Scevola,

who did not expect that turn, managed, however, to produce a rattling sort of laugh almost at once.

``Well,'' said Peyrol carelessly, ``there are not many of us to carry out treacheries about here. The women are

gone upstairs; Michel is down at the tartane. There's me, and you would not dare suspect me of treachery.

Scevola roused himself. ``This is not much of a jest,'' he said. ``I have been a treasonhunter. I . . .''

He checked that strain. He was full of purely emotional suspicions. Peyrol was talking like this only to annoy

him and to get him out of the way; but in the particular state of his feelings Scevola was acutely aware of

every syllable of these offensive remarks. ``Aha,'' he thought to himself, ``he doesn't mention the lieutenant.''

This omission seemed to the patriot of immense importance. If Peyrol had not mentioned the lieutenant it was

because those two had been plotting some treachery together, all the afternoon on board that tartane. That's

why nothing had been seen of them for the best part of the day. As a matter of fact, Scevola too had observed

Peyrol returning to the farm in the evening, only he had observed him from another window than Arlette.

This was a few minutes before his attempt to open the lieutenant's door, in order to find out whether Real was

in his room. He had tiptoed away, uncertain, and going into the kitchen had found only Catherine and Peyrol

there. Directly Arlette joined them a sudden inspiration made him run upstairs and try the door again. It was

open now! A clear proof that it was Arlette who had been locked up in there. The discovery that she made

herself at home like this in the lieutenant's room gave Scevola such a sickening shock that he thought he

would die of it. It was beyond doubt now that the lieutenant had been conspiring with Peyrol down on board

that tartane; for what else could they have been doing there? ``But why had not Real come up in the evening

with Peyrol?'' Scevola asked himself, sitting on the bench with his hands clasped between his knees. . . . It's

their cunning,'' he concluded suddenly. ``Conspirators always avoid being seen together. Ha!''

It was as if somebody had let off a lot of fireworks in his brain. He was illuminated, dazzled, confused, with a

hissing in his cars and showers of sparks before alone. Peyrol had vanished. Scevola seemed to remember

that he had heard somebody pronounce the word ``goodnight'' and the door of the salle slam. And sure

enough the door of the salle was shut now. A dim light shone in the window that was next to it. Peyrol had

extinguished three of the lamp flames and was now reclining on one of the long tables with that faculty of

accommodating himself to a plank an old seadog never loses. He had decided to remain below simply to be

handy, and he didn't lie down on one of the benches along the wall because they were too narrow. He left one

wick burning, so that the lieutenant should know where to look for him, and he was tired enough to think that

he would snatch a couple of hours' sleep before Real could return from Toulon. He settled himself with one

arm under his head as if he were on the deck of a privateer, and it never occurred to him that Scevola was

looking through the panes; but they were so small and dusty that the patriot could see nothing. His movement

had been purely instinctive. He wasn't even aware that he had looked in. He went away from there, walked to

the end of the building, spun round and walked back again to the other end; and it was as if he had been

afraid of going beyond the wall against which he reeled sometimes. ``Conspiracy, conspiracy,'' he thought.

He was now absolutely certain that the lieutenant was still hiding in that tartane, and was only waiting till all

was quiet to sneak back to his room in which Scevola had proof positive that Arlette was in the habit of

making herself at home. To rob him of his right to Arlette was part of the conspiracy no doubt.

``Have I been a slave to those two women, have I waited all those years, only to see that corrupt creature go

He became giddy with virtuous fury. There was enough evidence there for any revolutionary tribunal to cut

all their heads off. Tribunal! There was no tribunal! No revolutionary justice! No patriots! He hit his shoulder

against the wall in his distress with such force that he rebounded. This world was no place for patriots.

``If I had betrayed myself in the kitchen they would have murdered me in there.''

As it was he thought that he had said too much. Too much. ``Prudence! Caution!'' he repeated to himself,

gesticulating with both arms. Suddenly he stumbled and there was an amazing metallic clatter made by

``They are trying to kill me now,'' he thought, shaking with fright. He gave himself up for dead. Profound

silence reigned all round. Nothing more happened. He stooped fearfully to look and recognized his own

stable fork lying on the ground. He remembered he had left it at noon leaning against the wall. His own foot

had made it fall. He threw himself upon it greedily. ``Here's what I need,'' he muttered feverishly. ``I suppose

He flattened himself upright against the wall with the fork held along his body like a grounded musket. The

moon clearing the hilltop flooded suddenly the front of the house with its cold light, but he didn't know it;

he imagined himself still to be ambushed in the shadow and remained motionless, glaring at the path leading

He was so plainly visible in his deathlike rigidity that Michel, coming up out of the ravine, stopped dead

short, believing him an apparition not belonging to this earth. Scevola, on his side, noticed the moving

shadow cast by a manthat man!and charged forward without reflection, the prongs of the fork

lowered like a bayonet. He didn't shout. He came straight on, growling like a dog, and lunged headlong with

Michel, a primitive, untroubled by anything so uncertain as intelligence, executed an instantaneous sideways

leap with the precision of a wild animal; but he was enough of a man to become afterwards paralyzed with

astonishment. The impetus of the rush carried Scevola several yards down the hill, before he could turn round

and assume an offensive attitude. Then the two adversaries recognized each other. The terrorist exclaimed:

``Hey, you, Scevola,'' he cried, not very loud but very threatening. ``What are these tricks? . . . Keep away, or

``That's a story. Who did you think I was? Not the other! I haven't got a bandaged head, have I?''

Scevola began to scramble up. ``What's this?'' he asked. ``What head, did you say?''

``I say that if you come near I will knock you over with that stone,'' answered Michel. ``You aren't to be

trusted when the moon is full. Not recognize! There's a silly excuse for flying at people like this. You haven't

``No,'' said the exterrorist in a dubious tone and keeping a watchful eye on Michel, who was still holding the

``People have been saying for years that you are a kind of lunatic,'' Michel criticized fearlessly, because the

other's discomfiture was evident enough to put heart into the timid hare. ``If a fellow cannot come up now to

``I was only going to put this fork away,'' Scevola burst out volubly. ``I had left it leaning against the wall,

and as I. was passing along I suddenly saw it, so I thought I would put it in the stable before I went to bed.

``Now what do you think I would want with a stable fork at this time of night, if it wasn't to put it away?''

``You go about mooning like a fool and imagine a lot of silly things, you great, stupid imbecile. All I wanted

to do was to ask whether everything was all right down there, and you, idiot, bound to one side like a goat

Michel, accustomed to do what he was told, opened his fingers slowly, not quite convinced but thinking there

``You are dangerous. You ought to have your feet and hands tied every full moon. What did you say about a

``Was that all?'' said Scevola. He was asking himself what on earth could have happened down there during

the afternoon to cause a broken head. Clearly, it must have been either a fight or an accident, but in any case

he considered that it was for him a favourable circumstance, for obviously a man with a bandaged head is at a

disadvantage. He was inclined to think it must have been some silly accident, and he regretted profoundly

that the lieutenant had not killed himself outright. He turned sourly to Michel.

``Now you may go into the shed. And don't try any of your tricks with me any more, because next time you

He began to move towards the yard gate which stood always open, throwing over his shoulder an order to

Michel: ``Go into the salle. Somebody has left a light in there. They all seem to have gone crazy today.

Take the lamp into the kitchen and put it out and see that the door into the yard is shut. I am going to bed.'' He

passed through the gateway, but he did not penetrate into the yard very far. He stopped to watch Michel

obeying the order. Scevola, advancing his head cautiously beyond the pillar of the gate, waited till he had

seen Michel open the door of the salle and then bounded out again across the level space and down the ravine

path. It was a matter of less than a minute. His fork was still on his shoulder. His only desire was not to be

interfered with, and for the rest he did not care what they all did, what they would think and how they would

behave. The fixed idea had taken complete possession of him. He had no plan, but he had a principle on

which to act; and that was to get at the lieutenant unawares, and if the fellow died without knowing what

hand had struck him, so much the better. Scevola was going to act in the cause of virtue and justice. It was

not to be a matter of personal contest at all. Meantime, Michel, having gone into the salle, had discovered

Peyrol fast asleep on a table. Though his reverence for Peyrol was unbounded, his simplicity was such that he

shook his master by the shoulder as he would have done any common mortal. The rover passed from a state

of inertia into a sitting posture so quickly that Michel stepped back a pace and waited to be addressed. But as

``No?'' remarked Peyrol placidly. ``I must have forgotten.'' But Michel remained agitated and murmured:

``That's all right,'' said Peyrol. ``What are you fussing about? How far can he escape, do you think?''

A slow grin appeared on Michel's face. ``If he tries to scramble over the top of the rocks, he will get a broken

neck in a very short time,'' he said. ``And he certainly won't get very far, that's a fact.''

``And he doesn't seem strong either. He crawled out of the cabin door and got as far as the little water cask

and he dipped and dipped into it. It must be half empty by now. After that he got on to his legs. I cleared out

ashore directly I heard him move,'' he went on in a tone of intense selfapproval. ``I hid myself behind a rock

``Quite right,'' observed Peyrol. After that word of commendation, Michel's face wore a constant grin.

``He sat on the afterdeck,'' he went on as if relating an immense joke, ``with his feet dangling down the

hold, and may the devil take me if I don't think he had a nap with his back against the cask. He was nodding

and catching himself up, with that big white head of his. Well, I got tired of watching that, and as you told me

to keep out of his way, I thought I would come up here and sleep in the shed. That was right, wasn't it?''

``Quite right,'' repeated Peyrol. ``Well, you go now into the shed. And so you left him sitting on the

``Yes,'' said Michel. ``But he was rousing himself. I hadn't got away more than ten yards when I heard an

``Yes, notre maitre. I thought at first I would go back and see, but you had warned me against him, hadn't

Peyrol got down from the table with an air of concern which would have astonished Michel, if he had not

``This must be seen to,'' murmured the rover, buttoning the waistband of his trousers. ``My cudgel there, in

the corner. Now you go to the shed. What the devil are you doing at the door? Don't you know the way to the

shed?'' This last observation was caused by Michel remaining in the doorway of the salle with his head out

and looking to right and left along the front of the house. ``What's come to you? You don't suppose he has

``Oh no, notre maitre, quite impossible. I saw that sacre Scevola promenading up and down here. I don't want

``Was he promenading outside?'' asked Peyrol, with annoyance. ``Well, what do you think he can do to you?

What notions have you got in your silly head? You are getting worse and worse. Out you go.''

Peyrol extinguished the lamp and, going out, closed the door without the slightest noise. The intelligence

about Scevola being on the move did not please him very much, but he reflected that probably the

sansculotte had fallen asleep again and after waking up was on his way to bed when Michel caught sight of

him. He had his own view of the patriot's psychology and did not think the women were in any danger.

Nevertheless he went to the shed and heard the rustling of straw as Michel settled himself for the night.

``Debout,'' he cried low. ``Sh, don't make any noise. I want you to go into the house and sleep at the bottom

of the stairs. If you hear voices, go up, and if you see Scevola about, knock him down. You aren't afraid of

``No, if you tell me not to be,'' said Michel, who, picking up his shoes, a present from Peyrol, walked barefoot

towards the house. The rover watched him slipping noiselessly through the salle door. Having thus, so to

speak, guarded his base, Peyrol proceeded down the ravine with a very deliberate caution. When he got as far

as the little hollow in the ground from which the mastheads of the tartane could be seen, he squatted and

waited. He didn't know what his prisoner had done or was doing and he did not want to blunder into the way

of his escape. The dayold moon was high enough to have shortened the shadows almost to nothing and all

the rocks were inundated by a yellow sheen, while the bushes by contrast looked very black. Peyrol reflected

that he was not very well concealed. The continued silence impressed him in the end. ``He has got away,'' he

thought. Yet he was not sure. Nobody could be sure. He reckoned it was about an hour since Michel had left

the tartane; time enough for a man, even on all fours, to crawl down to the shore of the cove. Peyrol wished

he had not hit so hard. His object could have been attained with half the force. On the other hand all the

proceedings of his prisoner, as reported by Michel, seemed quite rational. Naturally the fellow was badly

shaken. Peyrol felt as though he wanted to go on board and give him some encouragement, and even active

The report of a gun from seaward cut his breath short as he lay there meditating. Within a minute there was a

second report, sending another wave of deep sound among the crags and hills of the peninsula. The ensuing

silence was so profound that it seemed to extend to the very inside of Peyrol's head, and lull all his thoughts

for a moment. But he had understood. He said to himself that after this his prisoner, if he had life enough left

in him to stir a limb, would rather die than not try to make his way to the seashore. The ship was calling to

In fact those two guns had proceeded from the Amelia. After passing beyond Cape Esterel, Captain Vincent

dropped an anchor under foot off the beach just as Peyrol had surmised he would do. From about six o'clock

till nine the Amelia lay there with her unfurled sails hanging in the gear. Just before the moon rose the captain

came up on deck and after a short conference with his first lieutenant, directed the master to get the ship

under way and put her head again for the Petite Passe. Then he went below, and presently word was passed

on deck that the captain wanted Mr. Bolt. When the master's mate appeared in his cabin, Captain Vincent

``I don't think I ought to have listened to you,'' he said. ``Still, the idea was fascinating, but how it would

strike other people it is hard to say. The losing of our man is the worst feature. I have an idea that we might

recover him. He may have been captured by the peasants or have met with an accident. It's unbearable to

think of him lying at the foot of some rock with a broken leg. I have ordered the first and second cutters to be

manned, and I propose that you should take command of them, enter the cove and, if necessary, advance a

little inland to investigate. As far as we know there have never been any troops on that peninsula. The first

He talked for some time, giving more minute instructions, and then went on deck. The Amelia, with the two

cutters towing alongside, reached about halfway down the Passe and then the boats were ordered to proceed.

``Like this, Bolt,'' explained Captain Vincent, ``Symons will guess that we are looking for him; and if he is

hiding anywhere near the shore he will be sure to come down where he can be seen by you.''

The motive force of a fixed idea is very great. In the case of Scevola it was great enough to launch him down

the slope and to rob him for the moment of all caution. He bounded amongst the boulders, using the handle of

the stable fork for a staff. He paid no regard to the nature of the ground, till he got a fall and found himself

sprawling on his face, while the stable fork went clattering down until it was stopped by a bush. It was this

circumstance which saved Peyrol's prisoner from being caught unawares. Since he had got out of the little

cabin, simply because after coming to himself he had perceived it was open, Symons had been greatly

refreshed by long drinks of cold water and by his little nap in the fresh air. Every moment he was feeling in

better command of his limbs. As to the command of his thoughts, that was coming to him too rather quickly.

The advantage of having a very thick skull became evident in the fact that as soon as he had dragged himself

out of that cabin he knew where he was. The next thing he did was to look at the moon, to judge of the

passage of time. Then he gave way to an immense surprise at the fact of being alone aboard the tartane. As he

sat with his legs dangling into the open hold he tried to guess how it came about that the cabin had been left

He went on thinking about this unexpected situation. What could have become of that whiteheaded villain?

Was he dodging about somewhere watching for a chance to give him another tap on the head? Symons felt

suddenly very unsafe sitting there on the afterdeck in the full light of the moon. Instinct rather than reason

suggested to him that he ought to get down into the dark hold. It seemed a great undertaking at first, but once

he started he accomplished it with the greatest ease, though he could not avoid knocking down a small spar

which was leaning up against the deck. It preceded him into the hold with a loud crash which gave poor

Symons an attack of palpitation of the heart. He sat on the keelson of the tartane and gasped, but after a while

reflected that all this did not matter. His head felt very big, his neck was very painful and one shoulder was

certainly very stiff. He could never stand up against that old ruffian. But what had become of him? Why! He

had gone to fetch the soldiers! After that conclusion Symons became more composed. He began to try to

remember things. When he had last seen that old fellow it was daylight, and nowSymons looked up at the

moon againit must be near six bells in the first watch. No doubt the old scoundrel was sitting in a wine

shop drinking with the soldiers. They would be here soon enough! The idea of being a prisoner of war made

his heart sink a little. His ship appeared to him invested with an extraordinary number of lovable features

which included Captain Vincent and the first lieutenant. He would have been glad to shake hands even with

the corporal, a surly and malicious marine acting as masteratarms of the ship. ``I wonder where she is

now,'' he thought dismally, feeling his distaste for captivity grow with the increase of his strength.

It was at this moment that he heard the noise of Scevola's fall. It was pretty close; but afterwards he heard no

voices and footsteps heralding the approach of a body of men. If this was the old ruffian coming back, then

he was coming back alone. At once Symons started on all fours for the foreend of the tartane. He had an

idea that ensconced under the foredeck he would be in a better position to parley with the enemy and that

perhaps he could find there a handspike or some piece of iron to defend himself with. just as he had settled

At the very first glance Symons perceived that this one was very unlike the man he expected to see. He felt

rather disappointed. As Scevola stood still in full moonlight Symons congratulated himself on having taken

up a position under the foredeck. That fellow, who had a beard, was like a sparrow in body compared with

the other; but he was armed dangerously with something that looked to Symons like either a trident or

fishgrains on a staff. ``A devil of a weapon that,'' he thought, appalled. And what on earth did that beggar

The newcomer acted strangely at first. He stood stockstill, craning his neck here and there, peering along

the whole length of the tartane, then crossing the deck he repeated all those performances on the other side.

``He has noticed that the cabin door is open. He's trying to see where I've got to. He will be coming forward

to look for me,'' said Symons to himself. ``If he corners me here with that beastly pronged affair I am done

for.'' For a moment he debated within himself whether it wouldn't be better to make a dash for it and scramble

ashore; but in the end he mistrusted his strength. ``He would run me down for sure,'' he concluded. ``And he

means no good, that's certain. No man would go about at night with a confounded thing like that if he didn't

Scevola, after keeping perfectly still, straining his ears for any sound from below where he supposed

Lieutenant Real to be, stooped down to the cabin scuttle and called in a low voice: ``Are you there,

lieutenant?'' Symons saw these motions and could not imagine their purport. That excellent able seaman of

proved courage in many cuttingout expeditions broke into a slight perspiration. In the light of the moon the

prongs of the fork polished by much use shone like silver, and the whole aspect of the stranger was weird and

Scevola, receiving no answer, remained in a stooping position. He could not detect the slightest sound of

breathing down there. He remained in this position so long that Symons became quite interested. ``He must

think I am still down there,'' he whispered to himself. The next proceeding was quite astonishing. The man,

taking up a position on one side of the cuddy scuttle and holding his horrid weapon as one would a boarding

pike, uttered a terrific whoop and went on yelling in French with such volubility that he quite frightened

Symons. Suddenly he left off, moved away from the scuttle and looked at a loss what to do next. Anybody

who could have seen then Symons' protruded head with his face turned aft would have seen on it an

expression of horror, ``The cunning beast,'' he thought. ``If I had been down there, with the row he made I

would have surely rushed on deck and then he would have had me.'' Symons experienced the feeling of a very

narrow escape; yet it brought not much relief. It was simply a matter of time. The fellow's homicidal purpose

was evident. He was bound before long to come forward. Symons saw him move, and thought, ``Now he's

coming,'' and prepared himself for a dash. ``If I can dodge past those blamed prongs I might be able to take

him by the throat,'' he reflected, without, however, feeling much confidence in himself.

But to his great relief Scevola's purpose was simply to conceal the fork in the hold in such a manner that the

handle of it just reached the edge of the afterdeck. In that position it was of course invisible to anybody

coming from the shore. Scevola had made up his mind that the lieutenant was out of the tartane. He had

wandered away along the shore and would probably be back in a moment. Meantime it had occurred to him

to see if he could discover anything compromising in the cabin. He did not take the fork down with him

because in that confined space it would have been useless and rather a source of embarrassment than

otherwise, should the returning lieutenant find him there. He cast a circular glance around the basin and then

Every movement of his was watched by Symons. He guessed Scevola's purpose by his movements and said

to himself: ``Here's my only chance, and not a second to be lost either.'' Directly Scevola turned his back on

the forepart of the tartane in order to go down the little cabin ladder, Symons crawled out from his

concealment. He ran along the hold on all fours for fear the other should turn his head round before

disappearing below, but directly he judged that the man had touched bottom, he stood on his feet and

catching hold of the main rigging swung himself on the afterdeck and, as it were in the same movement,

flung himself on the doors of the cabin which came together with a crash. How he could secure them he had

not thought, but as a matter of fact he saw the padlock hanging on a staple on one side; the key was in it, and

Almost simultaneously with the crash of the cabin door there was a shrill exclamation of surprise down there,

and just as Symons had turned the key the man he had trapped made an effort to break out. That, however,

did not disturb Symons. He knew the strength of that door. His first action was to get possession of the stable

fork. At once he felt himself a match for any single man or even two men unless they had firearms. He had

no hope, however, of being able to resist the soldiers and really had no intention of doing so. He expected to

see them appear at any moment led by that confounded marinero. As to what the farmer man had come for on

board the tartane he had not the slightest doubt about it. Not being troubled by too much imagination, it

seemed to him obvious that it was to kill an Englishman and for nothing else. ``Well, I am jiggered,'' he

exclaimed mentally. ``The damned savage! I haven't done anything to him. They must be a murderous lot

hereabouts.'' He looked anxiously up the slope. He would have welcomed the arrival of soldiers. He wanted

more than ever to be made a proper prisoner, but a profound stillness reigned on the shore and a most

absolute silence down below in the cabin. Absolute. No word, no movement. The silence of the grave. ``He's

scared to death,'' thought Symons, hitting in his simplicity on the exact truth. ``It would serve him jolly well

right if I went down there and ran him through with that thing. I would do it for a shilling, too.'' He was

getting angry. It occurred to him also that there was some wine down there too. He discovered he was very

thirsty and he felt rather faint. He sat down on the little skylight to think the matter over while awaiting the

soldiers. He even gave a friendly thought to Peyrol himself. He was quite aware that he could have gone

ashore and hidden himself for a time, but that meant in the end being hunted among the rocks and, certainly,

The first gun of the Amelia lifted him to his feet as though he had been snatched up by the hair of his head.

He intended to give a resounding cheer, but produced only a feeble gurgle in his throat. His ship was talking

to him. They hadn't given him up. At the second report he scrambled ashore with the agility of a catin

fact, with so much agility that he had a fit of giddiness. After it passed off he returned deliberately to the

tartane to get hold of the stable fork. Then trembling with emotion, he staggered off quietly and resolutely

with the only purpose of getting down to the seashore. He knew that as long as he kept downhill he would be

all right. The ground in this part being a smooth rocky surface and Symons being barefooted, he passed at no

great distance from Peyrol without being heard. When he got on rough ground he used the stable fork for a

staff. Slowly as he moved he was not really strong enough to be surefooted. Ten minutes later or so Peyrol,

lying ensconced behind a bush, beard the noise of a rolling stone far away in the direction of the cove.

Instantly the patient Peyrol got on his feet and started towards the cove himself. Perhaps he would have

smiled if the importance and gravity of the affair in which he was engaged had not given all his thoughts a

serious cast. Pursuing a higher path than the one followed by Symons, he had presently the satisfaction of

seeing the fugitive, made very noticeable by the white bandages about his head, engaged in the last part of the

steep descent. No nurse could have watched with more anxiety the adventure of a little boy than Peyrol the

progress of his former prisoner. He was very glad to perceive that he had had the sense to take what looked

like the tartane's boathook to help himself with. As Symons' figure sank lower and lower in his descent

Peyrol moved on, step by step, till at last he saw him from above sitting down on the seashore, looking very

forlorn and lonely, with his bandaged head between his hands. Instantly Peyrol sat down too, protected by a

projecting rock. And it is safe to say that with that there came a complete cessation of all sound and

Peyrol was not in doubt as to what was going to happen. He was as certain that the corvette's boat or boats

were now on the way to the cove as though he had seen them leave the side of the Amelia. But he began to

get a little impatient. He wanted to see the end of this episode. Most of the time he was watching Symons.

``Sacree tete dure,'' he thought. ``He has gone to sleep.'' Indeed Symons' immobility was so complete that he

might have been dead from his exertions: only Peyrol had a conviction that his once youthful chum was not

the sort of person that dies easily. The part of the cove he had reached was all right for Peyrol's purpose. But

it would have been quite easy for a boat or boats to fail to notice Symons, and the consequence of that would

be that the English would probably land in several parties for a search, discover the tartane. Peyrol shuddered.

Suddenly he made out a boat just clear of the eastern point of the cove. Mr. Bolt had been hugging the coast

and progressing very slowly, according to his instructions, till he had reached the edge of the point's shadow

where it lay ragged and black on the moonlit water. Peyrol could see the oars rise and fall. Then another boat

glided into view. Peyrol's alarm for his tartane grew intolerable. ``Wake up, animal, wake up,'' he mumbled

through his teeth. Slowly they glided on, and the first cutter was on the point of passing by the man on the

shore when Peyrol was relieved by the hail of ``Boat ahoy'' reaching him faintly where he knelt leaning

He saw the boat heading for Symons, who was standing up now and making desperate signs with both arms.

Then he saw him dragged in over the bows, the boat back out, and then both of them tossed oars and floated

Peyrol got up from his knees. They had their man now. But perhaps they would persist in landing since there

must have been some other purpose at first in the mind of the captain of the English corvette. This suspense

did not last long. Peyrol saw the oars fall in the water, and in a very few minutes the boats, pulling round,

``That's done,'' muttered Peyrol to himself. ``I will never see the silly hardhead again.'' He had a strange

notion that those English boats had carried off something belonging to him, not a man but a part of his own

life, the sensation of a regained touch with the faroff days in the Indian Ocean. He walked down quickly as

if to examine the spot from which Testa Dura had left the soil of France. He was in a hurry now to get back to

the farmhouse and meet Lieutenant Real, who would be due back from Toulon. The way by the cove was as

short as any other. When he got down he surveyed the empty shore and wondered at a feeling of emptiness

within himself. While walking up towards the foot of the ravine he saw an object lying on the ground. It was

a stable fork. He stood over it asking himself, ``How on earth did this thing come here?'' as though he had

been too surprised to pick it up. Even after he had done so he remained motionless, meditating on it. He

connected it with some activity of Scevola, since he was the man to whom it belonged, but that was no sort of

``Could he have drowned himself?'' thought Peyrol, looking at the smooth and luminous water of the cove. It

could give him no answer. Then at arm's length he contemplated his find. At last he shook his head,

The midnight meeting of Lieutenant Real and Peyrol was perfectly silent. Peyrol, sitting on the bench outside

the salle, had heard the footsteps coming up the Madrague track long before the lieutenant became visible.

But he did not move. He did not even look at him. The lieutenant, unbuckling his swordbelt, sat down

without uttering a word. The moon, the only witness of the meeting, seemed to shine on two friends so

identical in thought and feeling that they could commune with each other without words. It was Peyrol who

``I had the deuce of a job to hunt up the people and get the certificate stamped. Everything was shut up. The

PortAdmiral was giving a dinnerparty, but he came out to speak to me when I sent in my name. And all the

time, do you know, gunner, I was wondering whether I would ever see you again in my life. Even after I had

``What the devil did you think was going to happen to me?'' growled Peyrol perfunctorily. He had thrown the

incomprehensible stable fork under the narrow bench, and with his feet drawn in he could feel it there, lying

Real drew a folded paper from his pocket and dropped it on the bench. Peyrol picked it up carelessly. That

thing was meant only to throw dust into Englishmen's eyes. The lieutenant, after a moment's silence, went on

with the sincerity of a man who suffered too much to keep his trouble to himself.

``That was too late,'' said Peyrol, very positively. ``You had to come back here for very shame; and now you

A ferocious, not unpleasing thought flashed through Peyrol's mind. It was that this intruder on the

Escampobar sinister solitude in which he, Peyrol, kept order was under a delusion. Mind! Pah! His mind had

nothing to do with his return. He had returned because in Catherine's words, ``death had made a sign to him.''

``I made up my mind to play the part of dispatchbearer. As you have said yourself, Peyrol, one could not

bribe a manI mean an honest manso you will have to find the vessel and leave the rest to me. In two

or three days . . . You are under a moral obligation to let me have your tartane.''

Peyrol did not answer. He was thinking that Real had got his sign, but whether it meant death from starvation

or disease on board an English prison hulk, or in some other way, it was impossible to say. This naval officer

was not a man he could trust; to whom he could, for instance, tell the story of his prisoner and what he had

done with him. Indeed, the story was altogether incredible. The Englishman commanding that corvette had no

visible, conceivable or probable reason for sending a boat ashore to the cove of all places in the world. Peyrol

himself could hardly believe that it had happened. And he thought: ``If I were to tell that lieutenant he would

only think that I was an old scoundrel who had been in treasonable communication with the English for God

knows how long. No words of mine could persuade him that this was as unforeseen to me as the moon falling

``I wonder,'' he burst out, but not very loud, ``what made you keep on coming back here time after time!''

Real leaned his back against the wall and folded his arms in the familiar attitude of their leisurely talks.

Peyrol also, as if unable to resist the force of example, assumed the same attitude, and said:

Lieutenant Real leaned the back of his head against the wall and made no answer. Peyrol got on his legs.

``Oh, then, it wouldn't matter to anybody if you were to disappear for years in an English hulk. And so if I

Peyrol laughed quite loud, tilting his head back. All at once the laugh stopped short and the lieutenant was

amazed to see him reel as though he had been hit in the chest. While giving way to his bitter mirth, the rover

had caught sight of Arlette's face at the, open window of the lieutenant's room. He sat heavily on the bench

and was unable to make a sound. The lieutenant was startled enough to detach the back of his head from the

wall to look at him. Peyrol stooped low suddenly, and began to drag the stable fork from its concealment.

Then he got on his feet and stood leaning on it, glaring down at Real, who gazed upwards with languid

surprise. Peyrol was asking himself, ``Shall I pick him up on that pair of prongs, carry him down and fling

him in the sea?'' He felt suddenly overcome by a heaviness of arms and a heaviness of heart that made all

movement impossible. His stiffened and powerless limbs refused all service. . . . Let Catherine look after her

niece. He was sure that the old woman was not very far away. The lieutenant saw him absorbed in examining

``I was just looking,'' said Peyrol. ``One prong is chipped a little. I found this thing in a most unlikely place.''

``H'm,'' said Peyrol, who had recovered some selfcontrol. ``It belongs to Scevola.''

``You go about with a face fit for a funeral,'' he remarked suddenly in a deep voice. ``Hang it all, lieutenant, I

have heard you laugh once or twice, but the devil take me if I ever saw you smile. It is as if you had been

Lieutenant Real got up as if moved by a spring. ``Bewitched,'' he repeated, standing very stiff: ``In my cradle,

He walked forward with a tense still face straight at Peyrol as though he had been blind. Startled, the rover

stepped out of the way and, turning on his heels, followed him with his eyes. The lieutenant paced on, as if

drawn by a magnet, in the direction of the door of the house. Peyrol, his eyes fastened on Real's back, let him

nearly reach it before he called out tentatively: ``I say, lieutenant!'' To his extreme surprise, Real swung

``Oh, yes,'' he answered, also in an undertone. ``We will have to discuss that matter tomorrow.''

Peyrol, who had approached him close, said in a whisper which sounded quite fierce: ``Discuss? No! We will

have to carry it out tomorrow. I have been waiting half the night just to tell you that.''

Lieutenant Real nodded. The expression on his face was so stony that Peyrol doubted whether he had

``It isn't going to be child's play.'' The lieutenant was about to open the door when Peyrol said: ``A moment,''

``Michel is sleeping somewhere on the stairs. Will you just stir him up and tell him I am waiting outside? We

two will have to finish our night on board the tartane, and start work at break of day to get her ready for sea.

Yes, lieutenant, by noon. In twelve hours' time you will be saying goodbye to la belle France.''

Lieutenant Real's eyes staring over his shoulder, seemed glazed and motionless in the moonlight like the eyes

of a dead man. But he went in. Peyrol heard presently sounds within of somebody staggering in the passage

and Michel projected himself outside headlong, but after a stumble or two pulled up, scratching his head and

looking on every side in the moonlight without perceiving Peyrol, who was regarding him from a distance of

``Nothing, nothing! Only last time I saw it, it was on Scevola's shoulder.'' He glanced up at the sky.

``Well, now you go into the yard to put it away,'' said Peyrol, ``and don't be long about it.'' He waited with his

hand over his chin till his henchman reappeared before him. But Michel had not got over his surprise.

``Eh, what? He was going. . . . He hasn't gone to sleep in the stable, perchance? He does sometimes, you

Peyrol started towards the cove. After three or four steps he turned round and found Michel motionless where

``Come on,'' he cried, ``we will have to fit the tartane for sea directly the day breaks.''

Standing in the lieutenant's room just clear of the open window, Arlette listened to their voices and to the

sound of their footsteps diminishing down the slope. Before they had quite died out she became aware of a

Lieutenant Real had spoken the truth. While in Toulon he had more than once said to himself that he could

never go back to that fatal farmhouse. His mental state was quite pitiable. Honour, decency, every principle

forbade him to trifle with the feelings of a poor creature with her mind darkened by a very terrifying,

atrocious and, as it were, guilty experience. And suddenly he had given way to a base impulse and had

betrayed himself by kissing her hand! He recognized with despair that this was no trifling, but that the

impulse had come from the very depths of his being. It was an awful discovery for a man who on emerging

from boyhood had laid for himself a rigidly straight line of conduct amongst the unbridled passions and the

clamouring falsehoods of revolution which seemed to have destroyed in him all capacity for the softer

emotions. Taciturn and guarded, he had formed no intimacies. Relations he had none. He had kept clear of

social connections. It was in his character. At first he visited Escampobar because when he took his leave he

had no place in the world to go to, and a few days there were a complete change from the odious town. He

enjoyed the sense of remoteness from ordinary mankind. He had developed a liking for old Peyrol, the only

man who had nothing to do with the revolutionwho had not even seen it at work. The sincere lawlessness

of the exBrother of the Coast was refreshing. That one was neither a hypocrite nor a fool. When he robbed

or killed it was not in the name of the sacred revolutionary principles or for the love of humanity.

Of course Real had remarked at once Arlette's black, profound and unquiet eyes and the persistent dim smile

on her lips, her mysterious silences and the rare sound of her voice which made a caress of every word. He

heard something of her story from the reluctant Peyrol who did not care to talk about it. It awakened in Real

more bitter indignation than pity. But it stimulated his imagination, confirmed him in that scorn and angry

loathing for the revolution he had felt as a boy and had nursed secretly ever since. She attracted him by her

unapproachable aspect. Later he tried not to notice that, in common parlance, she was inclined to hang about

him. He used to catch her gazing at him stealthily. But he was free from masculine vanity. It was one day in

Toulon that it suddenly dawned on him what her mute interest in his person might mean. He was then sitting

outside a cafe sipping some drink or other with three or four officers, and not listening to their uninteresting

conversation. He marvelled that this sort of illumination should come to him like this, under these

circumstances; that he should have thought of her while seated in the street with these men round him, in the

midst of more or less professional talk! And then it suddenly dawned on him that he had been thinking of

He got up brusquely, flung the money for his drink on the table, and without a word left his companions. But

he had the reputation of an eccentric man and they did not even comment on his abrupt departure. It was a

clear evening. He walked straight out of town, and that night wandered beyond the fortifications, not noticing

the direction he took. All the countryside was asleep. There was not a human being stirring, and his progress

in that desolate part of the country between the forts could have been traced only by the barking of dogs in

``What has become of my rectitude, of my selfrespect, of the firmness of my mind?'' he asked himself

pedantically. ``I have let myself be mastered by an unworthy passion for a mere mortal envelope, stained with

His despair at this awful discovery was so profound that if he had not been in uniform he would have tried to

commit suicide with the small pistol he had in his pocket. He shrank from the act, and the thought of the

sensation it would produce, from the gossip and comments it would raise, the dishonouring suspicions it

would provoke. ``No,'' he said to himself, ``what I will have to do is to unmark my linen, put on civilian old

clothes and walk out much farther away, miles beyond the forts, hide myself in some wood or in an

overgrown hollow and put an end to my life there. The gendarmes or a gardechampetre discovering my

body after a few days, a complete stranger without marks of identity, and being unable to find out anything

On that resolution he turned back abruptly and at daybreak found himself outside the gate of the town. He

had to wait till it was opened, and then the morning was so far advanced that he had to go straight to work at

his office at the Toulon Admiralty. Nobody noticed anything peculiar about him that day. He went through

his routine tasks with outward composure, but all the same he never ceased arguing with himself. By the time

he returned to his quarters he had come to the conclusion that as an officer in wartime he had no right to

take his own life. His principles would not permit him to do that. In this reasoning he was perfectly sincere.

During a deadly struggle against an irreconcilable enemy his life belonged to his country. But there were

moments when his loneliness, haunted by the forbidden vision of Escampobar with the figure of that

distracted girl, mysterious, awful, pale, irresistible in her strangeness, passing along the walls, appearing on

the hillpaths, looking out of the window, became unbearable. He spent hours of solitary anguish shut up in

his quarters, and the opinion amongst his comrades was that Real's misanthropy was getting beyond all

One day it dawned upon him clearly that he could not stand this. It affected his power of thinking. ``I shall

begin to talk nonsense to people,'' he said to himself. ``Hasn't there been once a poor devil who fell in love

with a picture or a statue? He used to go and contemplate it. His misfortune cannot be compared with mine!

Well, I will go to look at her as at a picture too; a picture as untouchable as if it had been under glass.'' And

he went on a visit to Escampobar at the very first opportunity. He made up for himself a repellent face, he

clung to Peyrol for society, out there on the bench, both with their arms folded and gazing into space. But

whenever Arlette crossed his line of sight it was as if something had moved in his breast. Yet these visits

made life just bearable; they enabled him to attend to his work without beginning to talk nonsense to people.

He said to himself that he was strong enough to rise above temptation, that he would never overstep the line;

but it had happened to him upstairs in his room at the farm, to weep tears of sheer tenderness while thinking

of his fate. These tears would put out for a while the gnawing fire of his passion. He assumed austerity like an

armour and in his prudence he, as a matter of fact, looked very seldom at Arlette for fear of being caught in

The discovery that she had taken to wandering at night had upset him all the same, because that sort of thing

was unaccountable. It gave him a shock which unsettled, not his resolution, but his fortitude. That morning he

had allowed himself, while she was waiting on him, to be caught looking at her and then, losing his

selfcontrol, had given her that kiss on the hand. Directly he had done it he was appalled. He had overstepped

the line. Under the circumstances this was an absolute moral disaster. The full consciousness of it came to

him slowly. In fact this moment of fatal weakness was one of the reasons why he had let himself be sent off

so unceremoniously by Peyrol to Toulon. Even while crossing over he thought the only thing was not to

come back any more. Yet while battling with himself he went on with the execution of the plan. A bitter

irony presided over his dual state. Before leaving the Admiral who had received him in full uniform in a

room lighted by a single candle, he was suddenly moved to say: ``I suppose if there is no other way I am

authorized to go myself,'' and the Admiral had answered: ``I didn't contemplate that, but if you are willing I

don't see any objection. I would only advise you to go in uniform in the character of an officer entrusted with

dispatches. No doubt in time the Government would arrange for your exchange. But bear in mind that it

would be a long captivity, and you must understand it might affect your promotion.''

At the foot of the grand staircase in the lighted hall of the official building Real suddenly thought: ``And now

I must go back to Escampobar.'' Indeed he had to go to Escampobar because the false dispatches were there in

the valise he had left behind. He couldn't go back to the Admiral and explain that he had lost them. They

would look on him as an unutterable idiot or a man gone mad. While walking to the quay where the naval

boat was waiting for him he said to himself. ``This, in truth, is my last visit for years perhaps for life.''

Going back in the boat, notwithstanding that the breeze was very light, he would not let the men take to the

oars. He didn't want to return before the women had gone to bed. He said to himself that the proper and

honest thing to do was not to see Arlette again. He even managed to persuade himself that his uncontrolled

impulse had had no meaning for that witless and unhappy creature. She had neither started nor exclaimed; she

had made no sign. She had remained passive and then she had backed away and sat down quietly. He could

not even remember that she had coloured at all. As to himself, he had enough selfcontrol to rise from the

table and go out without looking at her again. Neither did she make a sign. What could startle that body

without mind? She had made nothing of it, he thought with selfcontempt. ``Body without mind! Body

without mind!'' he repeated with angry derision directed at himself. And all at once he thought: ``No. It isn't

that. All in her is mystery, seduction, enchantment. And thenwhat do I care for her mind!''

This thought wrung from him a faint groan so that the coxswain asked respectfully: ``Are you in pain,

lieutenant?'' ``It's nothing,'' he muttered and set his teeth with the desperation of a man under torture.

While talking with Peyrol outside the house, the words ``I won't see her again,'' and ``body without mind''

rang through his head. By the time he had left Peyrol and walked up the stairs his endurance was absolutely at

an end. All he wanted was to be alone. Going along the dark, passage he noticed that the door of Catherine's

room was standing ajar. But that did not arrest his attention. He was approaching a state of insensibility. As

he put his hand on the door handle of his room he said to himself. ``It will soon be over!''

He was so tired out that he was almost unable to hold up his head, and on going in he didn't see Arlette, who

stood against the wall on one side of the window, out of the moonlight and in the darkest corner of the room.

He only became aware of somebody's presence in the room as she flitted past him with the faintest possible

rustle, when he staggered back two paces and heard behind him the key being turned in the lock. If the whole

house had fallen into ruins, bringing him to the ground, lie could not have been more overwhelmed and, in a

manner, more utterly bereft of all his senses. The first that came back to him was the sense of touch when

Arlette seized his hand. He regained his hearing next. She was whispering to him: ``At last. At last! But you

are careless. If it had been Scevola instead of me in this room you would have been dead now. I have seen

him at work.'' He felt a significant pressure on his hand, but he couldn't see her properly yet, though he was

aware of her nearness with every fibre of his body. ``It wasn't yesterday though,'' she added in a low tone.

A great square of moonlight lay on the floor. He obeyed the tug like a little child. She caught hold of his other

hand as it hung by his side. He was rigid all over, without joints, and it did not seem to him that he was

breathing. With her face a little below his she stared at him closely, whispering gently: ``Eugene, Eugene,''

and suddenly the livid immobility of his face frightened her. ``You say nothing. You look ill. What is the

matter? Are you hurt?'' She let go his insensitive hands and began to feel him all over for evidence of some

injury. She even snatched off his hat and flung it away in her haste to discover that his head was unharmed;

but finding no sign of bodily damage, she calmed down like a sensible, practical person. With her hands

clasped round his neck she hung back a little. Her little even teeth gleamed, her black eyes, immensely

profound, looked into his, not with a transport of passion or fear but with a sort of reposeful satisfaction, with

a searching and appropriating expression. He came back to life with a low and reckless exclamation, felt

horribly insecure at once as if he were standing on a lofty pinnacle above a noise as of breaking waves in his

cars, in fear lest her fingers should part and she would fall off and be lost to him for ever. He flung his arms

round her waist and hugged her close to his breast. In the great silence, in the bright moonlight falling

through the window, they stood like that for a long, long time. He looked at her head resting on his shoulder.

Her eyes were closed and the expression of her unsmiling face was that of a delightful dream, something

infinitely ethereal, peaceful and, as it were, eternal. Its appeal pierced his heart with a pointed sweetness.

``She is exquisite. It's a miracle,'' he thought with a snort of terror. ``It's impossible.''

She made a movement to disengage herself, and instinctively he resisted, pressing her closer to his breast.

She yielded for a moment and then tried again. He let her go. She stood at arm's length, her hands on his

shoulders, and her charm struck him suddenly as funny in the seriousness of expression as of a very capable,

``All this is very well,'' she said in a businesslike undertone. ``We will have to think how to get away from

here. I don't mean now, this moment,'' she added, feeling his slight start. ``Scevola is thirsting for your

blood.'' She detached one hand to point a finger at the inner wall of the room, and lowered her voice. ``He's

there, you know. Don't trust Peyrol either. I was looking at you two out there. He has changed. I can trust him

no longer.'' Her murmur vibrated. ``He and Catherine behave strangely. I don't know what came to them. He

doesn't talk to me. When I sit down near him he turns his shoulder to me. . . .''

She felt Real sway under her hands, paused in concern and said: ``You are tired.'' But as he didn't move, she

actually led him to a chair, pushed him into it, and sat on the floor at his feet. She rested her head against his

knees and kept possession of one of his hands. A sigh escaped her. ``I knew this was going to be,'' she said

``Yes! I had prayed for it. Have you ever been prayed for, Eugene?'' she asked, lingering on his name.

``Oh yes! You have been prayed for today. I went down to the church. . . .'' Real could hardly believe his

ears. . . . The abbe let me in by the sacristy door. He told me to renounce the world. I was ready to renounce

anything for you.'' Real, turning his face to the darkest part of the room, seemed to see the spectre of fatality

awaiting its time to move forward and crush that calm, confident joy. He shook off the dreadful illusion,

``So you knew that it was going to be? Everything? Yes! And of me, what did you think?''

She pressed strongly the hand to which she had been clinging all the time. ``I thought this.''

``But what did you think of my conduct at times? You see, I did not know what was going to be. I . . . I was

``Conduct? What conduct? You came, you went. When you were not here I thought of you, and when you

were here I could look my fill at you. I tell you I knew how it was going to be. I was not afraid then.''

``You went about with a little smile,'' he whispered, as one would mention an inconceivable marvel.

``I was warm and quiet,'' murmured Arlette, as if on the borders of dreamland. Tender murmurs flowed from

her lips describing a state of blissful tranquillity in phrases that sounded like the veriest nonsense, incredible,

``You were perfect,'' it went on. ``Whenever you came near me everything seemed different.''

``Altogether. The light, the very stones of the house, the hills, the little flowers amongst the rocks! Even

Nanette was a white Angora with long silken hair, a pet that lived mostly in the yard.

``Oh, Nanette was different too,'' said Real, whom delight in the modulations of that voice had cut off from

all reality, and even from a consciousness of himself, while he sat stooping over that head resting against his

``Yes. Prettier. It's only the people. . . . She ceased on an uncertain note. The crested wave of enchantment

seemed to have passed over his head ebbing out faster than the sea, leaving the dreary expanses of the sand.

``They are so changed. Listen, tonight while you were awaywhy did you go away?I caught those

He was struck by the tone of awe, by its profound conviction. He could not know that Peyrol, unforeseen,

unexpected, inexplicable, had given by his mere appearance at Escampobar a moral and even a physical jolt

to all her being, that he was to her an immense figure, like a messenger from the unknown entering the

solitude of Escampobar; something immensely strong, with inexhaustible power, unaffected by familiarity

She sat up on the floor, moved her head up and down several times as if to say that there could be no doubt

``No, no. It isn't that. You could defend yourself. I could watch over you. I have been watching over you.

Only two nights ago I thought I heard noises outside and I went downstairs, fearing for you; your window

was open but I could see nobody, and yet I felt. . . . No, it isn't that! It's worse. I don't know what he wants to

do. I can't help being fond of him, but I begin to fear him now. When he first came here and I saw him he was

just the sameonly his hair was not so whitebig, quiet. It seemed to me that something moved in my

head. He was gentle, you know. I had to smile at him. It was as if I had recognized him. I said to myself.

``You! You were expected,'' she said in a low tone with a slight tinge of surprise at the question, but still

evidently thinking of the Peyrol mystery. ``Yes, I caught them at it last evening, he and Catherine in the

kitchen, looking at each other and as quiet as mice. I told him he couldn't order me about. Oh, mon cheri,

`Don't tell him anything. Nobody can guess what he thinks, and now even I cannot tell what he means when

he speaks. It was as if he knew a secret.'' She put an accent into those words which made Real feel moved

almost to tears. He repeated that Peyrol could have no influence over him, and he felt that he was speaking

the truth. He was in the power of his own word. Ever since he had left the Admiral in a goldembroidered

uniform, impatient to return to his guests, he was on a service for which he had volunteered. For a moment he

had the sensation of an iron hoop very tight round his chest. She peered at his face closely, and it was more

``All right. I'll be careful,'' he said. ``And Catherine, is she also dangerous?''

In the sheen of the moonlight Arlette, her neck and head above the gleams of the fichu, visible and elusive,

``Poor Aunt Catherine,'' she said. . . . ``Put your arm round me, Eugene. . . . She can do nothing. She used to

follow me with her eyes always. She thought I didn't notice, but I did. And now she seems unable to look me

in the face. Peyrol too, for that matter. He used to follow me with his eyes. Often I wondered what made them

``Yes, it is all changed,'' said Real in a tone which he tried to make as light as possible. ``Does Catherine

``When we went upstairs this evening I lay down all dressed on my bed and she sat on hers. The candle was

out, but in the moonlight I could see her quite plainly with her hands on her lap. When I could lie still no

longer I simply got up and went out of the room. She was still sitting at the foot of her bed. All I did was to

put my finger on my lips and then she dropped her head. I don't think I quite closed the door. . . . Hold me

tighter, Eugene, I am tired. . . . Strange, you know! Formerly, a long time ago, before I ever saw you, I never

rested and never felt tired.'' She stopped her murmur suddenly and lifted a finger recommending silence. She

listened and Real listened too, he did not know for what; and in this sudden concentration on a point, all that

had happened since he had entered the room seemed to him a dream in its improbability and in the more than

lifelike force dreams have in their inconsequence. Even the woman letting herself go on his arm seemed to

``She is there,'' breathed Arlette suddenly, rising on tiptoe to reach up to his ear. ``She must have heard you

``Outside the door. She must have been listening to the murmur of our voices. . . .'' Arlette breathed into his

ear as if relating an enormity. ``She told me one day that I was one of those who are fit for no man's arms.''

At this he flung his other arm round her and looked into her enlarged as if frightened eyes, while she clasped

him with all her strength and they stood like that a long time, lips pressed on lips without a kiss, and

breathless in the closeness of their contact. To him the stillness seemed to extend to the limits of the universe.

The thought ``Am I going to die?'' flashed through that stillness and lost itself in it like a spark flying in an

everlasting night. The only result of it was the tightening of his hold on Arlette.

An aged and uncertain voice was heard uttering the word ``Arlette.'' Catherine, who had been listening to

their murmurs, could not bear the long silence. They heard her trembling tones as distinctly as though she had

been in the room. Real felt as if it had saved his life. They separated silently.

``She will wake up Scevola,'' remarked Arlette to Real in a conversational tone. And they both waited for

sounds that did not come. Arlette pointed her finger at the wall. ``He is there, you know.''

``He is asleep,'' muttered Real. But the thought ``I am lost'' which he formulated in his mind had no reference

``He is afraid,'' said Arlette contemptuously in an undertone. ``But that means little. He would quake with

Slowly, as if drawn by the irresistible authority of the old woman, they had been moving towards the door.

Real thought with the sudden enlightenment of passion: ``If she does not go now I won't have the strength to

part from her in the morning.'' He had no image of death before his eyes but of a long and intolerable

separation. A sigh verging upon a moan reached them from the other side of the door and made the air around

``Of course I will,'' said Arlette with some feeling. ``Poor old thing. She and I have only each other in the

world, but I am the daughter here, she must do what I tell her.'' With one of her hands on Real's shoulder she

``I am coming directly. Go back to your room and wait for me,'' as if she had no doubt of being obeyed.

A profound silence ensued. Perhaps Catherine had gone already. Real and Arlette stood still for a whole

She gave him a quick kiss on the lips and again they stood like a pair of enchanted lovers bewitched into

``If she stays on,'' thought Real, ``I shall never have the courage to tear myself away, and then I shall have to

blow my brains out.'' But when at last she moved he seized her again and held her as if she had been his very

life. When he let her go he was appalled by hearing a very faint laugh of her secret joy.

``I laughed because I thought of all the days to come. Days and days and days. Have you thought of them?''

``Yes,'' Real faltered, like a man stabbed to the heart, holding the door half open. And he was glad to have

She slipped out with a soft rustle of her silk skirt, but before he had time to close the door behind her she put

back her arm for an instant. He had just time to press the palm of her hand to his lips. It was cool. She

snatched it away and he had the strength of mind to shut the door after her. He felt like a man chained to the

wall and dying of thirst, from whom a cold drink is snatched away. The room became dark suddenly. He

thought, ``A cloud over the moon, a cloud over the moon, an enormous cloud,'' while he walked rigidly to the

window, insecure and swaying as if on a tight rope. After a moment he perceived the moon in a sky on which

there was no sign of the smallest cloud anywhere. He said to himself, ``I suppose I nearly died just now. But

no,'' he went on thinking with deliberate cruelty, ``Oh, no, I shall not die. I shall only suffer, suffer, suffer. . .

``Suffer, suffer.'' Only by stumbling against the side of the bed did he discover that he had gone away from

the window. At once he flung himself violently on the bed with his face buried in the pillow, which he bit to

restrain the cry of distress about to burst through his lips. Natures schooled into insensibility when once

overcome by a mastering passion are like vanquished giants ready for despair. He, a man on service, felt

himself shrinking from death and that doubt contained in itself all possible doubts of his own fortitude. The

only thing he knew was that he would be gone tomorrow morning. He shuddered along his whole extended

length, then lay still gripping a handful of bedclothes in each hand to prevent himself from leaping up in

panicky restlessness. He was saying to himself pedantically, ``I must lie down and rest, I must rest to have

strength for tomorrow, I must rest,'' while the tremendous struggle to keep still broke out in waves of

perspiration on his forehead. At last sudden oblivion must have descended on him because he turned over and

A strange, dim, cold light filled the room; a light he did not recognize for anything he had known before, and

at the foot of his bed stood a figure in dark garments with a dark shawl over its head, with a fleshless

predatory face and dark hollows for its eyes, silent, expectant, implacable. . . . Is this death?'' he asked

himself, staring at it terrified. It resembled Catherine. It said again: ``Ecoutez.'' He took away his eyes from it

and glancing down noticed that his clothes were torn open on his chest. He would not look up at that thing,

``You are an honest man.'' It was Catherine's unemotional voice. ``The day has broken. You will go away.''

``She is asleep,'' went on Catherine or whoever it was, ``exhausted, and you would have to shake her hard

before she would wake. You will go. You know,'' the voice continued inflexibly, ``she is my niece, and you

know that there is death in the folds of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no man.''

Real felt all the anguish of an unearthly experience. This thing that looked like Catherine and spoke like a

cruel fate had to be faced. He raised his head in this light that seemed to him appalling and not of this world.

``Listen well to me, you too,'' he said. ``If she had all the madness of the world and the sin of all the murders

of the Revolution on her shoulders, I would still hug her to my breast. Do you understand?''

The apparition which resembled Catherine lowered and raised its hooded head slowly. ``There was a time

when I could have hugged l'enfer meme to my breast. He went away. He had his vow. You have only your

``I have my duty,'' said Lieutenant Real in measured tones, as if calmed by the excess of horror that old

``I will carry my shoes in my hand,'' he said. He sighed deeply and felt as if sleepy. ``It is very early,'' he

``Peyrol is already down at the well,'' announced Catherine. ``What can he be doing there all this time?'' she

added in a troubled voice. Real, with his feet now on the ground, gave her a side glance; but she was already

gliding away, and when he looked again she had vanished from the room and the door was shut.

Catherine, going downstairs, found Peyrol still at the well. He seemed to be looking into it with extreme

``That's pleasant news, Mademoiselle Catherine,'' he said. ``You are down early.''

``Yes,'' she admitted, ``but you too, Peyrol. Is Michel about? Let him come and have some coffee too.''

``Michel's at the tartane. Perhaps you don't know that she is going to make a little voyage.'' He drank a

mouthful of coffee and took a bite out of a slice of bread. He was hungry. He had been up all night and had

even had a conversation with Citizen Scevola. He had also done some work with Michel after daylight;

however, there had not been much to do because the tartane was always kept ready for sea. Then after having

again locked up Citizen Scevola, who was extremely concerned as to what was going to happen to him but

was left in a state of uncertainty, he had come up to the farm, had gone upstairs where he was busy with

various things for a time, and then had stolen down very cautiously to the well, where Catherine, whom he

had not expected downstairs so early, had seen him before she went into Lieutenant Real's room. While he

enjoyed his coffee he listened without any signs of surprise to Catherine's comments upon the disappearance

of Scevola. She had looked into his den. He had not slept on his pallet last night, of that she was certain, and

he was nowhere to be seen, not even in the most distant field, from the points of vantage around the farm. It

was inconceivable that he should have slipped away to Madrague, where he disliked to go, or to the village,

where he was afraid to go. Peyrol remarked that whatever happened to him he was no great loss, but

``It frightens a body,'' she said. ``He may be hiding somewhere to jump on one treacherously. You know what

``Well, the lieutenant will have nothing to fear, as he's going away. As to myself, Scevola and I are good

friends. I had a long talk with him quite recently. You two women can manage him perfectly; and then, who

Catherine stared at him, if such a word as stare can be applied to a profound contemplative gaze. ``The

``No, he is going away. Didn't you know it?'' The old woman continued to look at him profoundly. ``Yes, he

For another minute or so Catherine continued silent in her contemplative attitude. Then her hesitation came to

an end. She could not resist the desire to inform Peyrol of the events of the night. As she went on Peyrol

forgot the halffull bowl of coffee and his halfeaten piece of bread. Catherine's voice flowed with austerity.

She stood there, imposing and solemn like a peasantpriestess. The relation of what had been to her a

soulshaking experience did not take much time, and she finished with the words, ``The lieutenant is an

honest man.'' And after a pause she insisted further: ``There is no denying it. He has acted like an honest

For a moment longer Peyrol continued to look at the coffee in the bowl, then without warning got up with

``Where is he, that honest man?'' he shouted suddenly in stentorian tones which not only caused Catherine to

raise her hands, but frightened himself, and he dropped at once to a mere forcible utterance. ``Where is that

Even Catherine's hieratic composure was disturbed. ``Why,'' she said, looking really disconcerted, ``he will

Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine stopped him. ``For God's sake, Monsieur Peyrol,'' she

said, half in entreaty and half in command, ``don't wake up the child. Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep! Don't

wake her up. God only knows how long it is since she has slept properly. I could not tell you. I daren't think

of it.'' She was shocked by hearing Peyrol declare: ``All this is confounded nonsense.'' But he sat down again,

seemed to catch sight of the coffee bowl and emptied what was left in it down his throat.

``I don't want her on my hands more crazy than she has been before,'' said Catherine, in a sort of exasperation

but in a very low tone. This phrase in its selfish form expressed a real and profound compassion for her niece.

She dreaded the moment when that fatal Arlette would wake up and the dreadful complications of life which

her slumbers had suspended would have to be picked up again. Peyrol fidgeted on his seat.

``But, sacre nom d'un chien, there is never any wind before eleven o'clock,'' Peyrol exclaimed in a tone of

profound annoyance, yet trying to moderate his voice, while Catherine, indulgent to his changing moods,

only compressed her lips and nodded at him soothingly. ``It is impossible to work with people like that,'' he

``Do you know, Monsieur Peyrol, that she has been to see the priest?'' Catherine was heard suddenly,

towering above her end of the table. The two women had had a talk before Arlette had been induced by her

``What? Priest? . . . Now look here, Catherine,'' he went on with repressed ferocity, ``do you imagine that all

``I can think of nothing but that niece of mine. We two have nobody but each other in the world,'' she went

on, reproducing the very phrase Arlette had used to Real. She seemed to be thinking aloud, but noticed that

Peyrol was listening with attention. ``He wanted to shut her up from everybody,'' and the old woman clasped

her meagre hands with a sudden gesture. ``I suppose there are still some convents about the world.''

``You and the patronne are mad together,'' declared Peyrol. ``All this only shows what an ass the cure is. I

don't know much about these things, though I have seen some nuns in my time, and some very queer ones

too, but it seems to me that they don't take crazy people into convents. Don't you be afraid. I tell you that.'' He

stopped because the inner door of the kitchen came open and Lieutenant Real stepped in. His sword hung on

his forearm by the belt, his hat was on his head. He dropped his little valise on the floor and sat down in the

nearest chair to put on his shoes which he had brought down in his other hand. Then he came up to the table.

Peyrol, who had kept his eyes on him, thought: ``Here is one who looks like a moth scorched in the fire.''

Real's eyes were sunk, his cheeks seemed hollowed and the whole face had an arid and dry aspect.

``Well, you are in a fine state for the work of deceiving the enemy,'' Peyrol observed. ``Why, to look at you,

nobody would believe a word you said. You are not going to be ill, I hope. You are on service. You haven't

got the right to be ill. I say, Mademoiselle Catherine, produce the bottleyou know, my private bottle. . . .''

He snatched it from Catherine's hand, poured some brandy into the lieutenant's coffee, pushed the bowl

towards him and waited. ``Nom de nom!'' he said forcibly, ``don't you know what this is for? It's for you to

drink.'' Real obeyed with a strange, automatic docility. ``And now,'' said Peyrol, getting up, ``I will go to my

room and shave. This is a great daythe day we are going to see the lieutenant off.''

Till then Real had not uttered a word, but directly the door closed behind Peyrol he raised his head.

``Catherine!'' His voice was like a rustle in his throat. She was looking at him steadily and he continued:

``Listen, when she finds I am gone you tell her I will return soon. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.''

``Yes, my good Monsieur,'' said Catherine in an unmoved voice but clasping her hands convulsively. ``There

Real got up, put the swordbelt over his head, picked up the valise. There was a little flush on his cheeks.

``Adieu,'' he said to the silent old woman. She made no answer, but as he turned away she raised her hand a

little, hesitated, and let it fall again. It seemed to her that the women of Escampobar had been singled out for

divine wrath. Her niece appeared to her like the scapegoat charged with all the murders and blasphemies of

the Revolution. She herself too had been cast out from the grace of God. But that had been a long time ago.

She had made her peace with Heaven since. Again she raised her hand and, this time, made in the air the sign

Meanwhile upstairs Peyrol, scraping his big flat cheek with an English razorblade at the window, saw

Lieutenant Real on the path to the shore; and high above there, commanding a vast view of sea and land, he

shrugged his shoulders impatiently with no visible provocation. One could not trust those epaulettewearers.

They would cram a fellow's head with notions either for their own sake or for the sake of the service. Still, he

was too old a bird to be caught with chaff; and besides, that longlegged stiff beggar going down the path

with all his officer airs, was honest enough. At any rate he knew a seaman when he saw one, though he was

Cleaning the razorblade (one of a set of twelve in a case) he had a vision of a brilliantly hazy ocean and an

English Indiaman with her yards braced all ways, her canvas blowing loose above her bloodstained decks

overrun by a lot of privateersmen and with the island of Ceylon swelling like a thin blue cloud on the far

horizon. He had always wished to own a set of English blades and there he had got it, fell over it as it were,

lying on the floor of a cabin which had been already ransacked. ``For good steelit was good steel,'' he

thought looking at the blade fixedly. And there it was, nearly worn out. The others too. That steel! And here

he was holding the case in his hand as though he had just picked it up from the floor. Same case. Same man.

He shut the case brusquely, flung it into his seachest which was standing open, and slammed the lid down.

The feeling which was in his breast and had been known to more articulate men than himself, was that life

was a dream less substantial than the vision of Ceylon lying like a cloud on the sea. Dream left astern. Dream

straight ahead. This disenchanted philosophy took the shape of fierce swearing. ``Sacre nom de nom de nom.

While tying his neckcloth he handled it with fury as though he meant to strangle himself with it. He rammed

a soft cap on to his venerable locks recklessly, seized his cudgelbut before leaving the room walked up to

the window giving on the east. He could not see the Petite Passe on account of the lookout hill, but to the left

a great portion of the Hyeres roadstead lay spread out before him, pale grey in the morning light, with the

land about Cape Blanc swelling in the distance with all its details blurred as yet and only one conspicuous

object presenting to his sight something that might have been a lighthouse by its shape, but which Peyrol

knew very well was the English corvette already under way and with all her canvas set.

This sight pleased Peyrol mainly because he had expected it. The Englishman was doing exactly what he had

expected he would do, and Peyrol looked towards the English cruiser with a smile of malicious triumph as if

he were confronting her captain. For some reason or other he imagined Captain Vincent as longfaced, with

yellow teeth and a wig, whereas that officer wore his own hair and had a set of teeth which would have done

honour to a London belle and was really the hidden cause of Captain Vincent appearing so often wreathed in

That ship at this great distance and steering in his direction held Peyrol at the window long enough for the

increasing light of the morning to burst into sunshine, colouring and fillingin the flat outline of the land with

tints of wood and rock and field, with clear dots of buildings enlivening the view. The sun threw a sort of

halo around the ship. Recollecting himself, Peyrol left the room and shut the door quietly. Quietly too he

descended the stairs from his garret. On the landing he underwent a short inward struggle, at the end of which

he approached the door of Catherine's room and opening it a little, put his head in. Across the whole width of

it he saw Arlette fast asleep. Her aunt had thrown a light coverlet over her. Her low shoes stood at the foot of

the bed. Her black hair lay loose on the pillow; and Peyrol's gaze became arrested by the long eyelashes on

her pale cheek. Suddenly he fancied she moved, and he withdrew his head sharply, pulling the door to. He

listened for a moment as if tempted to open it again, but judging it too risky, continued on his way

downstairs. At his reappearance in the kitchen Catherine turned sharply. She was dressed for the day, with a

big white cap on her head, a black bodice and a brown skirt with ample folds. She had a pair of varnished

``No signs of Scevola,'' she said, advancing towards Peyrol. ``And Michel too has not been here yet.''

Peyrol thought that if she had been only shorter, what with her black eyes and slightly curved nose she would

have looked like a witch. But witches can read people's thoughts, and he looked openly at Catherine with the

``I took good care not to make any noise upstairs, Mademoiselle Catherine. When I am gone the house will

She had a curious expression. She struck Peyrol suddenly as if she were lost in that kitchen in which A she

She seemed to be listening to some distant sound, and after Peyrol had added, ``Everything is all right now,''

she nodded and after a moment said in a manner that for her was unexpectedly impulsive:

``No offence,'' Peyrol excused himself in a tone of gloom rather than of apology. ``It is no use to attach any

importance to things. What is this life? Phew! Nobody can remember onetenth of it. Here I am; and, you

know, I would bet that if one of my oldtime chums came along and saw me like this, here with youI

mean one of those chums that stand up for a fellow in a scrimmage and look after him should he be

hurtwell, I bet,'' he repeated, ``he wouldn't know me. He would say to himself perhaps, `Hullo! here's a

He paused. Catherine, with her back to him and calling him, not ``Monsieur,'' but ``Peyrol,'' tout court,

remarked, not exactly with displeasure, but rather with an ominous accent that this was no time for idle talk.

Peyrol, however, continued, though his tone was very far from being that of idle talk:

``But you see, Mademoiselle Catherine, you were not like the others. You allowed yourself to be struck all of

Her long thin frame, bent low to work the bellows under the enormous overmantel, she assented: ``Perhaps!

``That's what I say. If you had had things happen to you which happened to me. . . .''

``But you men, you are different. lt doesn't matter what you do. You have got your own strength. You need

He remained looking at her searchingly with something like a hint of a smile on his shaven lips, but she

turned away to the sink where one of the women working about the farm had deposited a great pile of

vegetables. She started on them with a brokenbladed knife, preserving her sibylline air even in that homely

``It will be a good soup, I see, at noon today,'' said the rover suddenly. He turned on his heels and went out

through the salle. The whole world lay open to him, or at any rate the whole of the Mediterranean, viewed

down the ravine between the two hills. The bell of the farm's milchcow, which had a talent for keeping

herself invisible, reached him from the right, but he could not see as much as the tips of her horns, though he

looked for them. He stepped out sturdily. He had not gone twenty yards down the ravine when another sound

made him stand still as if changed into stone. It was a faint noise resembling very much the hollow rumble an

empty farmcart would make on a stony road, but Peyrol looked up at the sky, and though it was perfectly

clear, he did not seem pleased with its aspect. He had a hill on each side of him and the placid cove below his

feet. He muttered ``H'm! Thunder at sunrise. It must be in the west. It only wanted that!'' He feared it would

first kill the little breeze there was and then knock the weather up altogether. For a moment all his faculties

seemed paralyzed by that faint sound. On that sea ruled by the gods of Olympus he might have been a pagan

mariner subject to Jupiter's caprices; but like a defiant pagan he shook his fist vaguely at space which

answered him by a short and threatening mutter. Then he swung on his way till he caught sight of the two

mastheads of the tartane, when he stopped to listen. No sound of any sort reached him from there, and he

went on his way thinking, ``Go from one thing to another thoughtlessly! Indeed! . . . That's all old Catherine

knows about it.'' He had so many things to think of that he did not know which to lay hold of first. He just let

them lie jumbled up in his head. His feelings too were in a state of confusion, and vaguely he felt that his

conduct was at the mercy of an internal conflict. The consciousness of that fact accounted perhaps for his

sardonic attitude towards himself and outwardly towards those whom he perceived on board the tartane; and

especially towards the lieutenant whom he saw sitting on the deck leaning against the head of the rudder,

characteristically aloof from the two other persons on board. Michel, also characteristically, was standing on

the top of the little cabin scuttle, obviously looking out for his ``maitre.'' Citizen Scevola, sitting on deck,

seemed at first sight to be at liberty, but as a matter of fact he was not. He was loosely tied up to a stanchion

by three turns of the mainsheet with the knot in such a position that he could not get at it without attracting

attention; and that situation seemed also somewhat characteristic of Citizen Scevola with its air of half

liberty, half suspicion and, as it were, contemptuous restraint. The sansculotte, whose late experiences had

nearly unsettled his reason, first by their utter incomprehensibility and afterwards by the enigmatical attitude

of Peyrol, had dropped his head and folded his arms on his breast. And that attitude was dubious too. It might

have been resignation or it might have been profound sleep. The rover addressed himself first to the

``Le moment approche,'' said Peyrol with a queer twitch at a corner of his lip, while under his soft woollen

cap his venerable locks stirred in the breath of a suddenly warm air. ``The great momenteh?''

He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be hovering above the lieutenant's shoulder.

``What's this infernal company?'' murmured the latter without even looking at Peyrol.

``All old friendsquoi?'' said Peyrol in a homely tone. ``We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves.

The fewer the men the greater the glory. Catherine is getting the vegetables ready for the noonday soup and

the Englishman is coming down towards the Passe where he will arrive about noon too, ready to have his eye

put out. You know, lieutenant, that will be your job. You may depend on me for sending you off when the

moment comes. For what is it to you? You have no friends, you have not even a petite amie. As to expecting

an old rover like meoh no, lieutenant! Of course liberty is sweet, but what do you know of it, you

epaulettewearers? Moreover, I am no good for quarterdeck talks and all that politeness.''

``I wish, Peyrol, you would not talk so much,'' said Lieutenant Real, turning his head slightly. He was struck

by the strange expression on the old rover's face. ``And I don't see what the actual moment matters. I am

going to look for the fleet. All you have to do is to hoist the sails for me and then scramble ashore.''

``Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids Goddam! Moi, j'aime les Anglais Ils ont un si bon caractere!''

``He! Citoyen!'' and then remarked confidentially to Real: ``He isn't asleep, you know, but he isn't like the

English, he has a sacre mauvais caractere. He got into his head,'' continued Peyrol, in a loud and innocent

tone, ``that you locked him up in this cabin last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he gave you just

Both Lieutenant Real and the innocent Michel appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the time

Peyrol was thinking: ``I wish to goodness I knew how that thunderstorm is getting on and what course it is

shaping. I can't find that out unless I go up to the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be as far as the

Rhone Valley; no doubt it is and it will come out of it too, curses on it. One won't be able to reckon on half an

hour of steady wind from any quarter.'' He directed a look of ironic gaiety at all the faces in turn. Michel met

it with a faithfuldog gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his chin buried on his chest. Lieutenant

Real was insensible to outward impressions and his absent stare made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself

presently fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles

``It's hot early,'' he announced aloud but only because he had formed the habit of talking to himself. He would

His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he proposed to masthead the yards and even asked Lieutenant

Real to help in that operation which was accomplished in silence except for the faint squeaking of the blocks.

``Like this,'' said Peyrol, ``you have only to let go the ropes and you will be under canvas at once.''

Without answering Real returned to his position by the rudderhead. He was saying to himself``I am

sneaking off. No, there is honour, duty. And of course I will return. But when? They will forget all about me

and I shall never be exchanged. This war may last for years,'' and illogically he wished he could have had

a God to whom he could pray for relief in his anguish. ``She will be in despair,'' he thought, writhing

inwardly at the mental picture of a distracted Arlette. Life, however, had embittered his spirit early, and he

said to himself: ``But in a month's time will she even give me a thought?'' Instantly he felt remorseful with a

remorse strong enough to lift him to his feet as if he were morally obliged to go up again and confess to

Arlette this sacrilegious cynicism of thought. ``I am mad,'' he muttered, perching himself on the low rail. His

lapse from faith plunged him into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all his strength of will go out of

him. He sat there apathetic and suffering. He meditated dully: ``Young men have been known to die

suddenly; why should not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my endurance. I am half dead already.

``Peyrol,'' he said in such a piercing tone that even Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to

reduce his shrillness and went on speaking very carefully: ``I have left a letter for the Secretary General at the

Majorite to pay twentyfive hundred francs to Jeanyou are Jean, are you not?Peyrol, price of the

``What did you do that for?'' asked Peyrol with an extremely stony face. ``To get me into trouble?''

``Don't be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your, name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper. I

must ask you to go there and tell them that you have seen with your own eyes Lieutenant Real sail away on

The stoniness of Peyrol persisted but his eyes were full of fury. ``Oh, yes, I see myself going there.

Twentyfive hundred francs! Twentyfive hundred fiddlesticks.'' His tone changed suddenly. ``I heard some

one say that you were an honest man, and I suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with your honesty.''

He glared at the lieutenant and then thought: ``He doesn't even pretend to listen to what I say''and another

sort of anger, partly contemptuous and with something of dim sympathy in it, replaced his downright fury.

``Pah!'' he said, spat over the side, and walking up to Real with great deliberation, slapped him on the

shoulder. The only effect of this proceeding was to make Real look up at him without any expression

Peyrol then picked up the lieutenant's valise and carried it down into the cuddy. As he passed by, Citizen

Scevola uttered the word ``Citoyen'' but it was only when he came back again that Peyrol condescended to

``You would not give me an account of how you came on board this tartane,'' said Peyrol in a tone that

sounded almost friendly, ``therefore I need not tell you what I will do with you.''

A low muttering of thunder followed so close upon his words that it might have come out of Peyrol's own

lips. The rover gazed uneasily at the sky. It was still clear overhead, and at the bottom of that little basin

surrounded by rocks there was no view in any other direction; but even as he gazed there was a sort of flicker

in the sunshine succeeded by a mighty but distant clap of thunder. For the next half hour Peyrol and Michel

were busy ashore taking a long line from the tartane to the entrance of the little basin where they fastened the

end of it to a bush. This was for the purpose of hauling the tartane out into the cove. Then they came aboard

again. The bit of sky above their heads was still clear, but while walking with the hauling line near the cove

Peyrol had got a glimpse of the edge of the cloud. The sun grew scorching all of a sudden, and in the

stagnating air a mysterious change seemed to come over the quality and the colour of the light. Peyrol flung

his cap on the deck, baring his head to the subtle menace of the breathless stillness of the air.

``Phew! ca chauffe,' he muttered, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. He wiped his forehead with his mighty

forearm upon which a mermaid with an immensely long fishtail was tattooed. Perceiving the lieutenant's

belted sword lying on the deck, he picked it up and without any ceremony threw it down the cabin stairs. As

``I believe you are one of those wretches corrupted by English gold,'' he cried like one inspired. His shining

eyes, his red cheeks, testified to the fire of patriotism burning in his breast, and he used that conventional

phrase of revolutionary time, a time when, intoxicated with oratory, he used to run about dealing death to

traitors of both sexes and all ages. But his denunciation was received in such profound silence that his own

belief in it wavered. His words had sunk into an abysmal stillness and the next sound was Peyrol speaking to

``I am afraid you will get very wet, lieutenant, before long,'' and then, looking at Real, he thought with great

conviction: ``Wet! He wouldn't mind getting drowned.'' Standing stockstill he fretted and fumed inwardly,

wondering where precisely the English ship was by this time and where the devil that thunderstorm had got

``There is not a breath of wind anywhere for miles.'' He was gratified by the fairly loud mutter rolling

apparently along the inland hills. Over the pool a little ragged cloud torn from the purple robe of the storm

Above at the farm Catherine had heard too the ominous mutter and came to the door of the salle. From there

she could see the purple cloud itself, convoluted and solid, and its sinister shadow lying over the hills. The

oncoming of the storm added to her sense of uneasiness at finding herself all alone in the house. Michel had

not come up. She would have welcomed Michel, to whom she hardly ever spoke, simply as a person

belonging to the usual order of things. She was not talkative, but somehow she would have liked somebody to

speak to just for a moment. This cessation of all sound, voices or footsteps, around the buildings was not

welcome; but looking at the cloud, she thought that there would be noise enough presently. However,

stepping back into the kitchen, she was met by a sound that made her regret the oppressive silence, by its

piercing and terrifying character; it was a shriek in the upper part of the house where, as far as she knew,

there was only Arlette asleep. In her attempt to cross the kitchen to the foot of the stairs the weight of her

accumulated years fell upon the old woman. She felt suddenly very feeble and hardly able to breathe. And all

at once the thought, ``Scevola! Was he murdering her up there?'' paralyzed the last remnant of her physical

powers. What else could it be? She fell, as if shot, into a chair under the first shock and found herself unable

to move. Only her brain remained active, and she raised her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the image of

the horrors upstairs. She heard nothing more from above. Arlette was dead. She thought that now it was her

turn. While her body quailed before the brutal violence, her weary spirit longed ardently f or the end. Let him

come! Let all this be over at last, with a blow on the head or a stab in the breast. She had not the courage to

uncover her eyes. She waited. But after about a minuteit seemed to her interminableshe heard rapid

footsteps overhead. Arlette was running here and there. Catherine uncovered her eyes and was about to rise

when she heard at the top of the stairs the name of Peyrol shouted with a desperate accent. Then, again, after

the shortest of pauses, the cry of: ``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' and then the sound of feet running downstairs. There was

another shriek, ``Peyrol!'' just outside the door before it flew open. Who was pursuing her? Catherine

managed to stand up. Steadying herself with one hand on the table she presented an undaunted front to her

niece who ran into the kitchen with loose hair flying and the appearance of wildest distraction in her eyes.

The staircase door had slammed to behind her. Nobody was pursuing her; and Catherine, putting forth her

lean brown arm, arrested Arlette's flight with such a jerk that the two women swung against each other. She

``What is this, in Heaven's name? Where are you rushing to?'' she cried, and the other, as if suddenly

The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung over the house now. There was a feeble flicker of lightning

``Dreams are nothing,'' she said. ``You are awake now. . . .'' And indeed Catherine thought that no dream

could be so bad as the realities which kept hold of one through the long waking hours.

``They were killing him,'' moaned Arlette, beginning to tremble and struggle in her aunt's arms. ``I tell you

She had seen Real set upon by a mob of men and women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light, in

front of a stretch of mere shells of houses with cracked walls and broken windows, and going down in the

midst of a forest of raised arms brandishing sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man flourishing a

red rag on a stick, while another was beating a drum which boomed above the sickening sound of broken

glass falling like rain on the pavement. And away round the corner of an empty street came Peyrol whom she

recognized by his white head, walking without haste, swinging his cudgel regularly. The terrible thing was

that Peyrol looked straight at her, not noticing anything, composed, without a frown or a smile, unseeing and

deaf, while she waved her arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She woke up with the piercing

sound of his name in her ears and with the impression of the dream so powerful that even now, looking

distractedly into her aunt's face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous crowd raised above Real's

sinking head. Yet the name that had sprung to her lips on waking was the name of Peyrol. She pushed her

aunt away with such force that the old woman staggered backwards and to save herself had to catch hold of

the overmantel above her head. Arlette ran to the door of the salle, looked in, came back to her aunt and

Catherine really did not know which path the lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that ``he'' meant

She said: ``He went away a long time ago'' grasped her niece's arm and added with an effort to steady her

Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself the magic name, ``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' then cried: ``I want

Catherine's face wore a look of unflinching patience. ``He has departed on service,'' she said. Her niece

looked at her with enormous eyes, coalblack, profound, and immovable, while in a forcible and distracted

tone she said: ``You and Peyrol have been plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how to make that

old man give him up. He is mine!'' She spun round wildly like a person looking for a way of escape from a

About Escampobar the air was murky but calm, and the silence was so profound that it was possible to hear

the first heavy drops of rain striking the ground. In the intimidating shadow of the stormcloud, Arlette stood

irresolute for a moment, but it was to Peyrol, the man of mystery and power, that her thoughts turned. She

was ready to embrace his knees, to entreat and to scold. ``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' she cried twice, and lent her ear as

Catherine, alone in the kitchen, moving with dignity, sat down in the armchair with the tall back, like a

Arlette flew down the slope. The first sign of her coming was a faint thin scream which really the rover alone

heard and understood. He pressed his lips in a particular way, showing his appreciation of the coming

difficulty. The next moment he saw, poised on a detached boulder and thinly veiled by the first perpendicular

shower, Arlette, who, catching sight of the tartane with the men on board of her, let out a prolonged shriek of

Real jumped to his feet with an extremely scared face, but Peyrol extended an arresting arm. ``She is calling

to me,'' he said, gazing at the figure poised on the rock. ``Well leaped! Sacre nom! . . . Well leaped!'' And he

``I see you, Peyrol,'' screamed Arlette, who seemed to be flying through the air. ``Don't you dare.''

Lieutenant Real put both his hands over his face. Michel looked on openmouthed, very much as if watching

a performance in a circus; but Scevola cast his eyes down. Arlette came on board with such an impetus that

Peyrol had to step forward and save her from a fall which would have stunned her. She struggled in his arms

with extreme violence. The heiress of Escampobar with her loose black hair seemed the incarnation of pale

fury. ``Miserable! Don't you dare!'' A roll of thunder covered her voice, but when it had passed away she was

heard again in suppliant tones. ``Peyrol, my friend, my dear old friend. Give him back to me,'' and all the time

her body writhed in the arms of the old seaman. ``You used to love me, Peyrol,'' she cried without ceasing to

struggle, and suddenly struck the rover twice in the face with her clenched fist. Peyrol's head received the two

blows as if it had been made of marble, but he felt with fear her body become still, grow rigid in his arms. A

heavy squall enveloped the group of people on board the tartane. Peyrol laid Arlette gently on the deck. Her

eyes were closed, her hands remained clenched; every sign of life had left her white face. Peyrol stood up and

looked at the tall rocks streaming with water. The rain swept over the tartane with an angry swishing roar to

which was added the sound of water rushing violently down the folds and seams of the precipitous shore

vanishing gradually from his sight, as if this had been the beginning of a destroying and universal

Lieutenant Real, kneeling on one knee, contemplated the pale face of Arlette. Distinct, yet mingling with the

``We can't put her ashore and leave her lying in the rain. She must be taken up to the house.'' Arlette's soaked

clothes clung to her limbs while the lieutenant, his bare head dripping with rain water, looked as if he had just

saved her from drowning. Peyrol gazed down inscrutably at the woman stretched on the deck and at the

kneeling man. ``She has fainted from rage at her old Peyrol,'' he went on rather dreamily. ``Strange things do

happen. However, lieutenant, you had better take her under the arms and step ashore first. I will help you.

The movements of the two men had to be careful and their progress was slow on the lower, steep part of the

slope. After going up more than twothirds of the way, they rested their insensible burden on a flat stone.

``Ha!'' he said. ``You will be able to carry her yourself the rest of the way and give her up to old Catherine.

Get a firm footing and I will lift her and place her in your arms. You can walk the distance quite easily.

There. . . . Hold her a little higher, or her feet will be catching on the stones.''

Arlette's hair was hanging far below the lieutenant's arm in an inert and heavy mass. The thunderstorm was

passing away, leaving a cloudy sky. And Peyrol thought with a profound sigh: ``I am tired.''

``Parbleu, she is light. If she were dead, you would find her heavy enough. Allons, lieutenant. No! I am not

coming. What's the good? I'll stay down here. I have no mind to listen to Catherine's scolding.''

The lieutenant, looking absorbed into the face resting in the hollow of his arm, never averted his gazenot

even when Peyrol, stooping over Arlette, kissed the white forehead near the roots of the hair, black as a

``Do? Why, give her up to old Catherine. And you may just as well tell her that I will be coming along

directly. That will cheer her up. I used to count for something in that house. Allez. For our time is very short.''

With these words he turned away and walked slowly down to the tartane. A breeze had sprung up. He felt it

on his wet neck and was grateful for the cool touch which recalled him to himself, to his old wandering self

which had known no softness and no hesitation in the face of any risk offered by life.

As he stepped on board, the shower passed away. Michel, wet to the skin, was still in the very same attitude

gazing up the slope. Citizen Scevola had drawn his knees up and was holding his head in his hands; whether

because of rain or cold or for some other reason, his teeth were chattering audibly with a continuous and

distressing rattle. Peyrol flung off his jacket, heavy with water, with a strange air as if it was of no more use

to his mortal envelope, squared his broad shoulders and directed Michel in a deep, quiet voice to let go the

lines holding the tartane to the shore. The faithful henchman was taken aback and required one of Peyrol's

authoritative ``Allez'' to put him in motion. Meantime the rover cast off the tiller lines and laid his hand with

an air of mastery on the stout piece of wood projecting horizontally from the rudderhead about the level of

his hip. The voices and the movements of his companions caused Citizen Scevola to master the desperate

trembling of his jaw. He wriggled a little in his bonds and the question that had been on his lips for a good

``What do you think of a little promenade at sea?'' Peyrol asked in a tone that was not unkindly.

Citizen Scevola, who had seemed totally and completely cast down and subdued, let out a most unexpected

Michel, busy forward, was moved to smile as though he had possessed a cultivated sense of incongruity.

``You shall be untied presently,'' he assured the blooddrinking patriot, who had been for so many years the

reputed possessor not only of Escampobar, but of the Escampobar heiress that, living on appearances, he had

almost come to believe in that ownership himself. No wonder he screeched at this rude awakening. Peyrol

As, directly the ropes had been let go, the tartane had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her by

Michel carried her towards the entrance by which the basin communicated with the cove. Peyrol attended to

the helm, and in a moment, gliding through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her way, shot out almost into

A little wind could be felt, running light wrinkles over the water, but outside the overshadowed sea was

already speckled with white caps. Peyrol helped Michel to haul aft the sheets and then went back to the tiller.

The pretty spickandspan craft that had been lying idle for so long began to glide into the wide world.

Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in admiration. Citizen Scevola's head had fallen on his knees while his

``He, Michel! Come here and cast loose the citizen. It is only fair that he should be untied for a little

When his order had been executed, Peyrol addressed himself to the desolate figure on the deck.

``Like this, should the tartane get capsized in a squall, you will have an equal chance with us to swim for your

Scevola disdained to answer. He was engaged in biting his knee with rage in a stealthy fashion.

``You came on board for some murderous purpose. Who you were after unless it was myself, God only

knows. I feel quite justified in giving you a little outing at sea. I won't conceal from you, citizen, that it may

not be without risk to life or limb. But you have only yourself to thank for being here.''

As the tartane drew clear of the cove, she felt more the weight of the breeze and darted forward with a lively

``She feels the sea,'' said Peyrol, who enjoyed the swift movement of his vessel. ``This is different from your

``Doesn't it seem funny to you, as you look back at the shore, to think that you have left nothing and nobody

Michel assumed the aspect of a man confronted by an intellectual problem. Since he had become Peyrol's

henchman he had lost the habit of thinking altogether. Directions and orders were easy things to apprehend;

but a conversation with him whom he called ``notre maitre'' was a serious matter demanding great and

``Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,'' said the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along the

``That's what I was thinking,'' said Peyrol half to himself, while Michel, who had good sealegs, kept his

balance to the movements of the craft without taking his eyes from the rover's face.

``No,'' Peyrol exclaimed suddenly, after a moment of meditation, ``I could not leave you behind.'' He

Michel hesitated for a moment before this extraordinary proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol, holding the

``If I had gone away by myself, I would have left you marooned on this earth like a man thrown out to die on

a desert island.'' Some dim perception of the solemnity of the occasion seemed to enter Michel's primitive

brain. He connected Peyrol's words with the sense of his own insignificant position at the tail of all mankind;

and, timidly, he murmured with his clear, innocent glance unclouded, the fundamental axiom of his

``Well, then, you will have to forgive me all that may happen between this and the hour of sunset.''

The tartane, obeying the helm, fell off before the wind, with her head to the eastward.

Peyrol murmured: ``She has not forgotten how to walk the seas.'' His unsubdued heart, heavy for so many

At that moment Real, amazed at finding no tartane in the basin, was running madly towards the cove, where

he was sure Peyrol must be waiting to give her up to him. He ran out on to the very rock on which Peyrol's

late prisoner had sat after his escape, too tired to care, yet cheered by the hope of liberty. But Real was in a

worse plight. He could see no shadowy form through the thin veil of rain which pitted the sheltered piece of

water framed in the rocks. The little craft had been spirited away. Impossible! There must be something

wrong with his eyes! Again the barren hillsides echoed the name of ``Peyrol,'' shouted with all the force of

Real's lungs. He shouted it only once, and about five minutes afterwards appeared at the kitchendoor,

panting, streaming with water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom of the sea. In the tallbacked

armchair Arlette lay, with her limbs relaxed, her head on Catherine's arm, her face white as death. He saw her

open her black eyes, enormous and as if not of this world; he saw old Catherine turn her head, heard a cry of

surprise, and saw a sort of struggle beginning between the two women. He screamed at them like a madman:

``Peyrol has betrayed me!'' and in an instant, with a bang of the door, he was gone.

The rain had ceased. Above his head the unbroken mass of clouds moved to the eastward, and he moved in

the same direction as if he too were driven by the wind up the hillside, towards the lookout. When he reached

the spot and, gasping, flung one arm round the trunk of the leaning tree, the only thing he was aware of

during the sombre pause in the unrest of the elements was the distracting turmoil of his thoughts. After a

moment he perceived through the rain the English ship with her topsails lowered on the caps, forging ahead

slowly across the northern entrance of the Petite Passe. His distress fastened insanely on the notion of there

being a connection between that enemy ship and Peyrol's inexplicable conduct. That old man had always

meant to go himself! And when a moment after, looking to the southward, he made out the shadow of the

tartane coming round the land in the midst of another squall, he muttered to himself a bitter: ``Of course!''

She had both her sails set. Peyrol was indeed pressing her to the utmost in his shameful haste to traffic with

the enemy. The truth was that from the position in which Real first saw him, Peyrol could not yet see the

English ship, and held confidently on his course up the middle of the strait. The manofwar and the little

tartane saw each other quite unexpectedly at a distance that was very little over a mile. Peyrol's heart flew

into his mouth at finding himself so close to the enemy. On board the Amelia at first no notice was taken. It

was simply a tartane making for shelter on the north side of Porquerolles. But when Peyrol suddenly altered

his course, the master of the manofwar, noticing the manoeuvre, took up the long glass for a look. Captain

Vincent was on deck and agreed with the master's remark that ``there was a craft acting suspiciously.'' Before

the Amelia could come round in the heavy squall, Peyrol was already under the battery of Porquerolles and,

so far, safe from capture. Captain Vincent had no mind to bring his ship within reach of the battery and risk

damage in his rigging or hull for the sake of a small coaster. However, the tale brought on board by Symons

of his discovery of a hidden craft, of his capture, and his wonderful escape, had made every tartane an object

of interest to the whole ship's company. The Amelia remained hove to in the strait while her officers watched

the lateen sails gliding to and fro under the protecting muzzles of the guns. Captain Vincent himself had been

impressed by Peyrol's manoeuvre. Coasting craft as a rule were not afraid of the Amelia. After taking a few

The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure, which had been the only subject of talk on board the corvette

for the last twentyfour 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

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 dispatchboat 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

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 jumpingoff

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

``I can make out three heads aboard, your honour, and one is white. I would swear to that white head

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 halfvexed 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,

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.

Real, 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

Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of Real 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 Real 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 Real 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.

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

Arlette, still stooping over her aunt's face, extended a hand towards Real, who, making a step forward, took it

``Oh, yes, you will, Aunt,'' insisted Arlette. ``You will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom you

Catherine's head dropped, whether in assent or grief; and Real 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, Real 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 ankledeep through the terrors of

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 Hyeres 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

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 Hyeres 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 tartane 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

The lieutenant remarked that there was no hope of a calm for the next twentyfour 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 Frejus, 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,

``Yes, sir,'' said the lieutenant, keeping his eyes on the white speck ahead, dancing lightly on the short

``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

``And it will be dark early today,'' said the first lieutenant, swinging the speaking trumpet by its lanyard.

``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

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

``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

``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

``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

``Go forward,'' said Peyrol, ``and ease off the foresheet now a little. This tartane has wings,'' he added to

Alone on the afterdeck 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

tenpractically 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!

``I don't want to be drowned!'' cried the citizen in his new hollow voice. Peyrol reflected a bit before he spoke

``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

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 goodhumoured face wore then a look of severe resolution, had beckoned his first

``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 outmanoeuvre a Frenchman, as you know. Send a few armed marines on the

forecastlehead. 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 wellaimed

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

A halfpuzzled smile dwelt persistently on the guileless countenance of the exfisherman. He stated what he

had always thought in respect of Peyrol's every remark: ``I think you are right, maitre.''

``Listen then, Michel. That ship will be alongside of us in less than half an hour. As she comes up they will

``They will open on us . . .'' repeated Michel, looking quite interested. ``But how do you know they will do

``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

firstrate 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

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

Half a dozen of the Amelia's marines stood ranged on the forecastlehead 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 whiteheaded 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 whitehaired chap.'' Captain Vincent shouted to the master:

The elderly seaman who was the master of the Amelia took a critical look before he gave the necessary

orders; and the Amelia closed on her chase with her decks resounding to the piping of boatswain's mates and

Peyrol, lying on his back under the swinging tiller, heard the calls shrilling and dying away; he heard the

ominous rush of Amelia's bow wave as the sloop foamed within ten yards of the tartane's stern; he even saw

her upper yards coming down, and then everything vanished out of the clouded sky. There was nothing in his

ears but the sound of the wind, the wash of the waves buffeting the little craft left without guidance, and the

continuous thrashing of its foresail the sheet of which Michel had let go according to orders. The tartane

began to roll heavily, but Peyrol's right arm was sound and he managed to put it round a bollard to prevent

himself from being flung about. A feeling of peace sank into him, not unmingled with pride. Everything he

had planned had come to pass. He had meant to play that man a trick, and now the trick had been played.

Played by him better than by any other old man on whom age had stolen, unnoticed, till the veil of peace was

torn down by the touch of a sentiment unexpected like an intruder and cruel like an enemy.

Peyrol rolled his head to the left. All he could see were the legs of Citizen Scevola sliding nervelessly to and

fro to the rolling of the vessel as if his body had been jammed somewhere. Dead, or only scared to death?

And Michel? Was he dead or dying, that man without friends whom his pity had refused to leave behind

marooned on the earth without even a dog for company? As to that, Peyrol felt no compunction; but he

thought he would have liked to see Michel once more. He tried to utter his name, but his throat refused him

even a whisper. He felt himself removed far away from that world of human sounds, in which Arlette had

screamed at him: ``Peyrol, don't you dare!'' He would never hear anybody's voice again! Under that grey sky

there was nothing for him but the swish of breaking seas and the ceaseless furious beating of the tartane's

foresail. His plaything was knocking about terribly under him, with her tiller flying madly to and fro just

clear of his head, and solid lumps of water coming on board over his prostrate body. Suddenly, in a desperate

lurch which brought the whole Mediterranean with a ferocious snarl level with the slope of the little deck,

Peyrol saw the Amelia bearing right down upon the tartane. The fear, not of death but of failure, gripped his

slowingdown heart. Was this blind Englishman going to run him down and sink the dispatches together with

the craft? With a mighty effort of his ebbing strength Peyrol sat up and flung his arm round the shroud of the

The Ameleia, whose way had carried her past the tartane for a quarter of a mile, before sail could be

shortened and her yards swung on the other tack, was coming back to take possession of her chase. In the

deepening dusk and amongst the foaming seas it was a matter of difficulty to make out the little craft. At the

very moment when the master of the manofwar, looking out anxiously from the forecastlehead, thought

that she might perhaps have filled and gone down, he caught sight of her rolling in the trough of the sea, and

so close that she seemed to be at the end of the Amelia's jibboom. His heart flew in his mouth. ``Hard a

Peyrol, sinking back on the deck in another heavy lurch of his craft, saw for an instant the whole of the

English corvette swing up into the clouds as if she meant to fling herself upon his very breast. A blown

seatop flicked his face noisily, followed by a smooth interval, a silence of the waters. He beheld in a flash the

days of his manhood, of strength and adventure. Suddenly an enormous voice like the roar of an angry

sealion seemed to fill the whole of the empty sky in a mighty and commanding shout: ``Steady!"''. . . And

with the sound of that familiar English word ringing in his ears Peyrol smiled to his visions and died.

The Amelia, stripped down to her topsails and hove to, rose and fell easily while on her quarter about a

cable's length away Peyrol's tartane tumbled like a lifeless corpse amongst the seas. Captain Vincent, in his

favourite attitude of leaning over the rail, kept his eyes fastened on his prize. Mr. Bolt, who had been sent for,

``Oh, here you are, Mr. Bolt. I have sent for you to go and take possession. You speak French, and there may

still be somebody alive in her. If so, of course you will send him on board at once. I am sure there can be

nobody unwounded there. It will anyhow be too dark to see much, but just have a good look round and secure

everything in the way of papers you can lay your hands on. Haul aft the foresheet and sail her up to receive a

tow line. I intend to take her along and ransack her thoroughly in the morning; tear down the cuddy linings

and so on, should you not find at once what I expect. . . .'' Captain Vincent, his white teeth gleaming in the

dusk, gave some further orders in a lower tone, and Mr. Bolt departed in a hurry. Half an hour afterwards he

was back on board, and the Amelia, with the tartane in tow, made sail to the eastward in search of the

Mr. Bolt, introduced into a cabin strongly lighted by a swinging lamp, tendered to his captain across the table

a sailcloth package corded and scaled, and a piece of paper folded in four, which, he explained, seemed to

be a certificate of registry, strangely enough mentioning no name. Captain Vincent seized the grey canvas

``This looks like the very thing, Bolt,'' he said, turning it over in his hands. ``What else did you find on

Bolt said that he had found three dead men, two on the afterdeck and one lying at the bottom of the open

hold with the bare end of the foresheet in his hand``shot down, I suppose, just as he had let it go,'' he

commented. He described the appearance of the bodies and reported that he had disposed of them according

to orders. In the tartane's cabin there was half a demijohn of wine and a loaf of bread in a locker; also, on the

floor, a leather valise containing an officer's uniform coat and a change of clothing. He had lighted the lamp

and saw that the linen was marked ``E. Real.'' An officer's sword on a broad shoulderbelt was also lying on

the floor. These things could not have belonged to the old chap with the white hair, who was a big man.

``Looks as if somebody had tumbled overboard,'' commented Bolt. Two of the bodies looked nondescript, but

``By Heavens!'' said Captain Vincent, ``he was that! Do you know, Bolt, that he nearly managed to escape

``I hated the necessity of shooting brave men like dogs,'' said Captain Vincent. ``Still, it was the only way;

and there may be something here,'' he went on, slapping the package with his open palm, ``that will justify me

Captain Vincent did not turn in but only lay down fully dressed on the couch till the officer of the watch,

appearing at the door, told him that a ship of the fleet was in sight away to windward. Captain Vincent

ordered the private night signal to be made. When he came on deck the towering shadow of a lineofbattle

ship that seemed to reach to the very clouds was well within hail and a voice bellowed from her through a

``His Majesty's sloop Amelia,'' hailed back Captain Vincent. ``What ship is that, pray?''

Instead of the usual answer there was a short pause and another voice spoke boisterously through the trumpet:

``The fleet is lying by,'' came the voice now with painstaking distinctness across the murmurs, whispers and

splashes of the black lane of water dividing the two ships. ``The Admiral bears S.S.E. If you stretch on till

daylight as you are, you will fetch him on the other tack in time for breakfast on board the Victory. Is

At every slight roll the sails of the Amelia, becalmed by the bulk of the seventyfour, flapped gently against

``In my desk,'' roared Captain Vincent in reply. . . . ``Enemy dispatches. . . . I say, Keats, fill on your ship.

Fill on her, I say, or you will be falling on board of me.'' He stamped his foot impatiently. ``Clap some hands

at once on the towline and run that tartane close under our stern,'' he called to the officer of the watch, ``or

else the old Superb will walk over her without ever knowing anything about it.''

When Captain Vincent presented himself on board the Victory it was too late for him to be invited to share

the Admiral's breakfast. He was told that Lord Nelson had not been seen on deck yet, that morning; and

presently word came that he wished to see Captain Vincent at once in his cabin. Being introduced, the captain

of the Amelia, in undress uniform, with a sword by his side and his hat under his arm, was received kindly,

made his bow and with a few words of explanation laid the packet on the big round table at which sat a silent

secretary in black clothes, who had been obviously writing a letter from his lordship's dictation. The Admiral

had been walking up and down, and after he had greeted Captain Vincent he resumed his pacing of a nervous

man. His empty sleeve had not yet been pinned on his breast and swung slightly every time he turned in his

walk. His thin locks fell lank against the pale cheeks, and the whole face in repose had an expression of

suffering with which the fire of his one eye presented a startling contrast. He stopped short and exclaimed

``A tartane! Captured on board a tartane! How on earth did you pitch upon that one out of the hundreds you

``I must confess that I got hold accidentally of some curious information,'' said Captain Vincent. ``It was all a

While the secretary was ripping open with a penknife the cover of the dispatches Lord Nelson took Captain

Vincent out into the stern gallery. The quiet and sunshiny morning had the added charm of a cool, light

breeze; and the Victory, under her three topsails and lower staysails, was moving slowly to the southward in

the midst of the scattered fleet carrying for the most part the same sail as the Admiral. Only far away two or

three ships could be seen covered with canvas trying to close with the flag. Captain Vincent noted with

satisfaction that the first lieutenant of the Amelia had been obliged to brace by his afteryards in order not to

``Why!'' exclaimed Lord Nelson suddenly, after looking at the sloop for a moment, ``you have that tartane in

``I thought that your lordship would perhaps like to see a 40ton lateen craft which has led such a chase to, I

``As I have already hinted to your lordship, certain information came in my way,'' began Captain Vincent,

who did not think it necessary to enlarge upon that part of the story. ``This tartane, which is not very different

to look at from the other tartanes along the coast between Cette and Genoa, had started from a cove on the

Giens Peninsula. An old man with a white head of hair was entrusted with the service and really they could

have found nobody better. He came round Cape Esterel intending to pass through the Hyeres roadstead.

Apparently he did not expect to find the Amelia in his way. And it was there that he made his only mistake. If

he had kept on his course I would probably have taken no more notice of him than of two other craft that

were in sight then. But he acted suspiciously by hauling up for the battery on Porquerolles. This manoeuvre

in connection with the information of which I spoke decided me to overhaul him and see what he had on

board.'' Captain Vincent then related concisely the episodes of the chase. ``I assure your lordship that I never

gave an order with greater reluctance than to open musketry fire on that craft; but the old man had given such

proofs of his seamanship and determination that there was nothing else for it. Why! at the very moment he

had the Amelia alongside of him he still made a most clever attempt to prolong the chase. There were only a

few minutes of daylight left, and in the darkness we might very well have lost him. Considering that they all

could have saved their lives simply by striking their sails on deck, I can not refuse them my admiration and

The Admiral, who had been all the time looking absently at the Amelia keeping her station with the tartane in

``You have a very smart little ship, Vincent. Very fit for the work I have given you to do. French built, isn't

``You don't seem to hate the French, Vincent,'' said the Admiral, smiling faintly.

``Not that kind, my lord,'' said Captain Vincent with a bow. ``I detest their political principles and the

characters of their public men, but your lordship will admit that for courage and determination we could not

``I never said that they were to be despised,'' said Lord Nelson. ``Resource, courage, yes. . . . If that Toulon

fleet gives me the slip, all our squadrons from Gibraltar to Brest will be in jeopardy. Why don't they come out

Vincent remarked the nervous agitation of the frail figure with a concern augmented by a fit of coughing

which came on the Admiral. He was quite alarmed by its violence. He watched the CommanderinChief in

the Mediterranean choking and gasping so helplessly that he felt compelled to turn his eyes away from the

painful spectacle; but he noticed also how quickly Lord Nelson recovered from the subsequent exhaustion.

``This is anxious work, Vincent,'' he said. ``It is killing me. I aspire to repose somewhere in the country, in

the midst of fields, out of reach of the sea and the Admiralty and dispatches and orders, and responsibility

too. I have been just finishing a letter to tell them at home I have hardly enough breath in my body to carry

me on from day to day. . . . But I am like that whiteheaded man you admire so much, Vincent,'' he pursued,

with a weary smile, ``I will stick to my task till perhaps some shot from the enemy puts an end to everything.

``What is it all about?'' asked the Admiral, beginning again to pace restlessly up and down the cabin.

``At the first glance the most important, my lord, are the orders for marine authorities in Corsica and Naples

``I always thought so,'' said the Admiral, his eye gleaming at the attentive countenance of Captain Vincent.

``This is a smart piece of work on your part, Vincent. I can do no better than send you back to your station.

Yes . . . Egypt . . . the Easts. . . . Everything points that way,'' he soliloquized under Vincent's eyes while the

secretary, picking up the papers with care, rose quietly and went out to have them translated and to make an

``And, yet who knows!'' exclaimed Lord Nelson, standing still for a moment. ``But the blame or the glory

must be mine alone. I will seek counsel from no man.'' Captain Vincent felt himself forgotten, invisible, less

than a shadow in the presence of a nature capable of such vehement feelings. ``How long can he last?'' he

The Admiral, however, soon remembered his presence, and at the end of another ten minutes Captain Vincent

left the Victory, feeling, like all officers who approached Lord Nelson, that he had been speaking with a

personal friend; and with a renewed devotion for the great seaofficer's soul dwelling in the frail body of the

CommanderinChief of his Majesty's ships in the Mediterranean. While he was being pulled back to his

ship a general signal went up in the Victory for the fleet to form line, as convenient, ahead and astern of the

Admiral; followed by another to the Amelia to part company. Vincent accordingly gave his orders to make

sail, and, directing the master to shape a course for Cape Cicie, went down into his cabin. He had been up

nearly the whole of the last three nights and he wanted to get a little sleep. His slurnbers, however, were short

and disturbed. Early in the afternoon he found himself broad awake and reviewing in his mind the events of

the day before. The order to shoot three brave men in cold blood, terribly distasteful at the time, was lying

heavily on him. Perhaps he had been impressed by Peyrol's white head, his obstinacy to escape him, the

determination shown to the very last minute, by something in the whole episode that suggested a more than

common devotion to duty and a spirit of daring defiance. With his robust health, simple good nature, and

sanguine temperament touched with a little irony, Captain Vincent was a man of generous feelings and of

``Yet,'' he reflected, ``they have been asking for it. There could be only one end to that affair. But the fact

remains that they were defenceless and unarmed and particularly harmlesslooking, and at the same time as

brave as any. That old chap now. . . .'' He wondered how much of exact truth there was in Symons' tale of

adventure. He concluded that the facts must have been true but that Symons' interpretation of them made it

extraordinarily difficult to discover what really there was under all that. That craft certainly was fit for

blockade running. Lord Nelson had been pleased. Captain Vincent went on deck with the kindliest feelings

The afternoon had turned out very fine. The British Fleet was just out of sight with the exception of one or

two stragglers, under a press of canvas. A light breeze in which only the Amelia could travel at five knots,

hardly ruffled the profundity of the blue waters basking in the warm tenderness of the cloudless sky. To south

and west the horizon was empty except for two specks very far apart, of which one shone white like a bit of

silver and the other appeared black like a drop of ink. Captain Vincent, with his purpose firm in his mind, felt

at peace with himself. As he was easily accessible to his officers his first lieutenant ventured a question to

``He looks very thin and worn out, but I don't think he is as ill as he thinks he is. I am sure you all would like

to know that his lordship is pleased with our yesterday's workthose papers were of some importance you

knowand generally with the Amelia. It was a queer chase, wasn't it?'' he went on. ``That tartane was

clearly and unmistakably running away from us. But she never had a chance against the Amelia.''

During the latter part of that speech the first lieutenant glanced astern as if asking himself how long Captain

Vincent proposed to drag that tartane behind the Amelia. The two keepers in her wondered also as to when

they would be permitted to get back on board their ship. Symons, who was one of them, declared that he was

sick and tired of steering the blamed thing. Moreover, the company on board made him uncomfortable; for

Symons was aware that in pursuance of Captain Vincent's orders, Mr. Bolt had had the three dead Frenchmen

carried into the cuddy which he afterwards secured with an enormous padlock that, apparently, belonged to it,

and had taken the key on board the Amelia. As to one of them, Symons' unforgiving verdict was that it would

have served him right to be thrown ashore for crows to peck his eyes out. And anyhow, he could not

understand why he should have been turned into the coxswain of a floating hearse, and be damned to it. . . .

Just about sunset, which is the time of burials at sea, the Amelia was hove to and, the rope being manned, the

tartane was brought alongside and her two keepers ordered on board their ship. Captain Vincent, leaning over

with his elbows on the rail, seemed lost in thought. At last the first lieutenant spoke.

``We are going to sink her by gunfire,'' declared Captain Vincent suddenly. ``His ship makes a very good

coffin for a seaman, and those men deserve better than to be thrown overboard to roll on the waves. Let them

rest quietly at the bottom of the sea in the craft to which they had stuck so well.''

The lieutenant, making no reply, waited for some more positive order. Every eye on the ship was turned on

the captain. But Captain Vincent said nothing and seemed unable or unwilling to give it yet. He was feeling

``Ah! Mr. Bolt,'' he said, catching sight of the master'smate in the waist. ``Did they have a flag on board that

``I think she had a tiny bit of ensign when the chase began, sir, but it must have blown away. It is not at the

end of her mainyard now.'' He looked over the side. ``The halliards are rove, though,'' he added.

``Well, Mr. Bolt,'' said Captain Vincent, ``you have had most to do with all this. Take a few men with you,

bend the French ensign on the halliards and sway his mainyard to the masthead.'' He smiled at all the faces

turned towards him. ``After all they never surrendered and, by heavens, gentlemen, we will let them go down

A profound but not disapproving silence reigned over the decks of the ship while Mr. Bolt with three or four

hands was busy executing the order. Then suddenly above the topgallant rail of the Amelia appeared the

upper curve of a lateen yard with the tricolour drooping from the point. A subdued murmur from all hands

greeted this apparition. At the same time Captain Vincent ordered the line holding the tartane alongside to be

cast off and the mainyard of the Amelia to be swung round. The sloop shooting ahead of her prize left her

stationary on the sea, then putting the helm up, ran back abreast of her on the other side. The port bowgun

was ordered to fire a round, aiming well forward. That shot, however, went just over, taking the foremast out

of the tartane. The next was more successful, striking the little hull between wind and water, and going out

well under water on the other side. A third was fired, as the men said, just for luck, and that too took effect, a

splintered hole appearing at the bow. After that the guns were secured and the Amelia, with no brace being

touched, was brought to her course towards Cape Cicie. All hands on board of her with their backs to the

sunset sky, clear like a pale topaz above the hard blue gem of the sea, watched the tartane give a sudden dip,

followed by a slow, unchecked dive. At last the tricolour flag alone remained visible for a tense and

interminable moment, pathetic and lonely, in the centre of a brimful horizon. All at once it vanished, like a

flame blown upon, bringing to the beholders the sense of having been left face to face with an immense,

When Lieutenant Real sailed away with the Toulon fleet on the great strategical cruise which was to end in

the battle of Trafalgar, Madame Real returned with her aunt to her hereditary house at Escampobar. She had

only spent a few weeks in town where she was not much seen in public. The lieutenant and his wife lived in a

little house near the western gate, and the lieutenant's official position, though he was employed on the staff

to the last, was not sufficiently prominent to make her absence from official ceremonies at all remarkable.

But this marriage was an object of mild interest in naval circles. Thosemostly menwho had seen

Madame Real at home, told stories of her dazzling complexion, of her magnificent black eyes, of her personal

and attractive strangeness, and of the Arlesian costume she insisted on wearing, even after her marriage to an

officer of the navy, being herself sprung from farmer stock. It was also said that her father and mother had

fallen victims in the massacres of Toulon after the evacuation of the town; but all those stories varied in detail

and were on the whole very vague. Whenever she went abroad Madame Real was attended by her aunt who

aroused almost as much curiosity as herself: a magnificent old woman with upright carriage and an austere,

brown, wrinkled face showing signs of past beauty. Catherine was also seen alone in the streets where, as a

matter of fact, people turned round to look after the thin and dignified figure, remarkable amongst the

passersby, whom she, herself, did not seem to see. About her escape from the massacres most wonderful

tales were told, and she acquired the reputation of a heroine. Arlette's aunt was known to frequent the

churches, which were all open to the faithful now, carrying even into the house of God her sibylline aspect of

a prophetess and her austere manner. It was not at the services that she was seen most. People would see her

oftener in an empty nave, standing slim and as straight as an arrow in the shade of a mighty pillar as if

making a call on the Creator of all things with whom she had made her peace generously, and now would

petition only for pardon and reconciliation with her niece Arlette. For Catherine for a long time remained

uncertain of the future. She did not get rid of her involuntary awe of her niece as a selected object of God's

wrath, until towards the end of her life. There was also another soul for which she was concerned. The pursuit

of the tartane by the Amelia had been observed from various points of the islands that close the roadstead of

Hyeres, and the English ship had been seen from the Fort de la Vigie opening fire on her chase. The result,

though the two vessels soon ran out of sight, could not be a matter of doubt. There was also the story told by

a coaster that got into Frejus, of a tartane being fired on by a squarerigged manofwar; but that apparently

was the next day. All these rumours pointed one way and were the foundation of the report made by

Lieutenant Real to the Toulon Admiralty. That Peyrol went out to sea in his tartane and was never seen again,

The day before the two women were to go back to Escampobar, Catherine approached a priest in the church

of Ste Marie Majeure, a little unshaven fat man with a watery eye, in order to arrange for some masses to be

``Pray for the soul of Jean,'' said Catherine. ``Yes, Jean. There is no other name.''

Lieutenant Real, wounded at Trafalgar, but escaping capture, retired with the rank of Capitaine de Fregate

and vanished from the eyes of the naval world in Toulon and indeed from the world altogether. Whatever

sign brought him back to Escampobar on that momentous night, was not meant to call him to his death but to

a quiet and retired life, obscure in a sense but not devoid of dignity. In the course of years he became the

Mayor of the Commune in that very same little village which had looked on Escampobar as the abode of

One of the earliest excitements breaking the monotony of the Escampobar life was the discovery at the

bottom of the well, one dry year when the water got very low, of some considerable obstruction. After a lot of

trouble in getting it up, this obstruction turned out to be a garment made of sailcloth, which had armholes

and three horn buttons in front, and looked like a waistcoat; but it was lined, positively quilted, with a

surprising quantity of gold pieces of various ages, coinages and nationalities. Nobody but Peyrol could have

put it there. Catherine was able to give the exact date; because she remembered seeing him doing something

at the well on the very morning before he went out to sea with Michel, carrying off Scevola. Captain Real

could guess easily the origin of that treasure, and he decided with his wife's approval to give it up to the

Government as the hoard of a man who had died intestate with no discoverable relations, and whose very

name had been a matter of uncertainty, even to himself. After that event the uncertain name of Peyrol found

itself oftener and oftener on Monsieur and Madame Real's lips, on which before it was but seldom heard;

though the recollection of his whiteheaded, quiet, irresistible personality haunted every corner of the

Escampobar fields. From that time they talked of him openly, as though he had come back to live again

Many years afterwards, one fine evening, Monsieur and Madame Real sitting on the bench outside the salle

(the house had not been altered at all outside except that it was now kept whitewashed), began to talk of that

episode and of the man who, coming from the seas, had crossed their lives to disappear at sea again.

``How did he get all that lot of gold?'' wondered Madame Real innocently. ``He could not possibly want it;

``That, ma chere amie,'' said Real, ``is not an easy question to answer. Men and women are not so simple as

they seem. Even you, fermiere (he used to give his wife that name jocularly, sometimes), are not so simple as

some people would take you to be. I think that if Peyrol were here he could not perhaps answer your question

And they went on, reminding each other in short phrases separated by long silences, of his peculiarities of

person and behaviour, when above the slope leading down to Madrague, there appeared first, the pointed

ears, and then the whole body of a very diminutive donkey of a light grey colour with dark points. Two

pieces of wood, strangely shaped, projected on each side of his body as far as his head, like very long shafts

of a cart. But the donkey dragged no cart after him. He was carrying on his back on a small pack saddle the

torso of a man who did not seem to have any legs. The little animal, beautifully groomed and with an

intelligent and even impudent physiognomy, stopped in front of Monsieur and Madame Real. The man,

balancing himself cleverly on the pack saddle with his withered legs crossed in front of him, slipped off,

disengaged his crutches from each side of the donkey smartly, propped himself on them, and with his open

palm gave the animal a resounding thwack which sent it trotting into the yard. The cripple of the Madrague in

his quality of Peyrol's friend (for the rover had often talked of him both to the women and to Lieutenant Real

with great appreciation``C'est un homme, ca'') had become a member of the Escampobar community. His

employment was to run about the country on errands, most unfit, one would think, for a man without legs.

But the donkey did all the walking while the cripple supplied the sharp wits and an unfailing memory. The

poor fellow, snatching off his hat and holding it with one hand alongside his right crutch, approached to

render his account of the day in the simple words: ``Everything has been done as you ordered, madame''; then

lingered, a privileged servant, familiar but respectful, attractive with his soft eyes, long face, and his pained

``Ah, one could talk a long time of him,'' said the cripple. ``He told me once that if I had been complete

with legs like everybody else, I suppose he meant I would have made a good comrade away there in

``Yes,'' murmured Madame Real thoughtfully. Then turning to her husband, she asked: ``What sort of man

was he really, Eugene?'' Captain Real remained silent. ``Did you ever ask yourself that question?'' she

``Yes,'' said Real. ``But the only certain thing we can say of him is that he was not a bad Frenchman.''

``Everything's in that,'' murmured the cripple, with fervent conviction in the silence that fell upon Real's

The blue level of the Mediterranean, the charmer and the deceiver of audacious men, kept the secret of its

fascinationhugged to its calm breast the victims of all the wars, calamities and tempests of its history,

under the marvellous purity of the sunset sky. A few rosy clouds floated high up over the Esterel range. The

breath of the evening breeze came to cool the heated rocks of Escampobar; and the mulberry tree, the only

big tree on the head of the peninsula, standing like a sentinel at the gate of the yard, sighed faintly in a

shudder of all its leaves, as if regretting the Brother of the Coast, the man of dark deeds, but of large heart,