Frenchman's Creek

Chapter XIV

THERE WERE TWO SHIPS in mid-channel, sailing in company about three miles distant from one another, and the leading ship had a curious rakish air about her, with her slanting masts and her coloured paintwork, as though she were leading the sober merchantman that followed her to uncharted waters beyond the far horizon.

The summer gale that had thrashed the sea for twenty-four hours without ceasing had now blown itself out, and the sky was hard and blue without a single cloud. The swell too had died away, leaving the sea quiet and curiously still, so that the two ships, with only the breath of a northerly breeze to drive them, stayed almost motionless in the channel, their sails hanging uselessly upon the yards. A smell of cooking came from the galley of the Merry Fortune, the warm brown smell of roasting chicken, and the fragrance of it crept into the open port-hole of the cabin, mingling with the fresh salt air and the warm sun. Dona opened her eyes, and she became aware for the first time that the ship was no longer pitching and tossing in the trough of the Atlantic swell, the sickness that had overtaken her was gone, and above all she was hungry, hungrier than she had been in her life. She yawned, stretching her arms above her head, smiling to herself because she was no longer sea-sick, and then she swore softly, using one of Harry's more stable-sounding oaths, for she remembered that by being sea-sick she had forfeited her wager. She put her hands up to her ears, fingering her ruby ear-rings reluctantly, and as she did so she realised with full consciousness that she was stark naked under the blanket, and there was no trace of her clothes upon the cabin floor.

It seemed eternity since she had stumbled down the companion-way in the dark, drenched, and exhausted, and sick, and flinging off her shirt and her breeches, and those lumping blistering shoes, had crept into the warmth of those comforting blankets, longing only for stillness and for sleep.

Someone must have come into the cabin while she was sleeping, for the port-hole was wide open that had been closed before against the weather, her clothes had been taken away, and in their place was a ewer of boiling water and a towel.

She climbed from the spacious bunk where she had lain for a day and a night, thinking, as she stood naked upon the floor of the cabin and washed, that whoever had been master of the Merry Fortune believed in comfort before vigilance. Glancing out of the port-hole as she parted her hair she saw away on the starboard bow the spars of La Mouette, gleaming scarlet in the sun. Once more the smell of chicken came to her nostrils, and then, hearing the sound of footsteps on the deck outside, she climbed back into her berth, dragging the blanket to her chin.

"Are you awake yet?" called the Frenchman. She bade him come in, leaning back against the pillow, her heart beating foolishly, and he stood there in the doorway smiling down at her, and he had a tray in his hands. "I have lost my ear-rings after all," she said.

"Yes, I know," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because I came below once to see how you were, and you threw a pillow at my head and damned me to hell," he answered.

She laughed, shaking her head. "You are lying," she said, "you never came, I never saw a soul,"

"You were too far gone to remember anything about it," he said, "but we will not argue. Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

"So am I. I thought we might have dinner together."

He began to lay the table, and she watched him from under cover of her blanket.

"What is the time?" she asked.

"About three o'clock in the afternoon," he told her.

"And what day would it be?"

"Sunday. Your friend Godolphin will have missed his morning in church, unless there is a good barber in Fowey."

He glanced up at the bulkhead, and following his eyes she saw the curled periwig hanging upon a nail above her head.

"When did you put it there?" she laughed. "When you were sick," he said.

And now she was silent, hating the thought that he had seen her at such a moment, so shaming, so grossly undignified, and she pulled the blanket yet more closely round her, watching his hands busy with the chicken.

"Can you eat a wing?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded, wondering how she could sit up without a stitch upon her body, and when he had turned his back to uncork the wine she sat up swiftly, and draped the blanket about her shoulders.

He brought her a plate of chicken, looking her up and down as he did so. "We can do better for you than that," he said, "you forget the Merry Fortune had been to the Indies," and going outside for a moment he stooped to a large wooden box that stood beside the companion-way, and lifting the top he brought out a gaily-coloured shawl, all scarlet and gold, with a silken fringe. "Perhaps Godolphin had this in mind for his wife," he said. "There are plenty more down in the hold if you want them."

He sat down at the table, tearing off a drumstick from the chicken, and eating it in his hand. She drank her wine, watching him over the rim of the glass.

"We might have been hanging from that tree in Godolphin's park," she said.

"We would have been, but for that slant of wind from the west," he answered.

"And what are we going to do now?"

"I never make plans on a Sunday," he told her.

She went on eating her chicken, seizing the wing in her hands as he was doing, and from the bows of the ship came the sound of Pierre Blanc's lute, and the men's voices singing softly.

"Do you always have the devil's own luck, Frenchman?" she said.

"Always," he answered, throwing his drumstick out of the port-hole, and taking the fellow.

The sun streamed in upon the table, while the lazy sea lapped against the side of the ship, and they went on eating, each aware of the other, and the hours that stretched before them.

"Rashleigh makes his seamen comfortable," said the Frenchman presently, looking about him, "perhaps that was why they were all asleep when we climbed on board."

"How many were there then?"

"Half-a-dozen, that is all."

"And what did you do with them?"

"Oh, we bound them back to back and gagged them, and cast them adrift in a boat. They were picked up by Rashleigh himself I dare say."

"Will the sea be rough again?"

"No, that is all finished."

She leant back on her pillow, watching the pattern that the sun made on the bulkhead.

"I am glad I had it, the danger and the excitement," she said, "but I am glad it is over too. I do not want to do it again, not that waiting outside Rashleigh's house, and hiding on the quay, and running across the hills to the cove until I thought my heart would burst."

"You did not do too badly, for a cabin-boy," he said. He looked across at her, and then away again, and she began to plait the silk fringe of the shawl he had given her. Pierre Blanc was still playing his lute, playing the little rippling song she had heard when she saw La Mouette for the first time anchored in the creek below Navron.

"How long shall we stay in the Merry Fortune?" she said.

"Why, do you want to go home?" he asked.

"No-no, I just wondered," she said.

He got up from the table, and crossing to the port-hole looked out at La Mouette where she lay almost becalmed some two miles distant.

"That's the way of it at sea," he said, "always too much wind or too little. We'd be at the French coast by now with a capful of breeze. Perhaps we shall get it, to-night."

He stood there with his hands deep in his breeches pockets, his lips framing the song that Pierre Blanc was playing on the lute.

"What will you do when the wind does come?" she asked.

"Sail within sight of land, and then leave a handful of men to take the Merry Fortune into port. As for ourselves, we shall return on board La Mouette"

She went on playing with the tassel of the shawl.

"And then where do we go?" she said.

"Back to Helford of course. Do you not want to see your children?"

She did not answer. She was watching the back of his head, and the set of his shoulders.

"Perhaps the night-jar is still calling in the creek at midnight," he said. "We could go and find him, and the heron too. I never finished the drawing of the heron, did I?"

"I do not know."

"There are many fish too in the river waiting to be caught," he said.

Pierre Blanc's song dwindled and died, and there was no sound but the lapping of water against the side of the ship. The Merry Fortune's bell struck the half-hour, and this was echoed by La Mouette, away in the distance. The sun blazed down upon the placid sea. Everything was peaceful. Everything was still.

He turned away then from the port-hole, and came and sat down on the bunk beside her, still whistling the song under his breath.

"This is the best moment for a pirate," he said. "The planning is over and done with, and the game a success. Looking back on it one can remember only the good moments, and the bad are put aside until next time. And so, as the wind will not blow before night-fall, we may do as we please."

Dona listened to the lapping of the sea against the hull.

"We might swim," she said, "in the cool of the evening. Before the sun goes down."

"We might," he said.

There was silence between them, and she went on watching the reflection of the sun above her head.

"I cannot get up until my clothes are dry," she said.

"No, I know."

"Will they be very long, out there, in the sun?"

"At least three hours more, I should say."

Dona sighed, and settled herself down against her pillow.

"Perhaps you could lower a boat," she said, "and send Pierre Blanc off to La Mouette for my gown."

"He is asleep by now," said the captain of the ship, "they are all asleep. Didn't you know that Frenchmen like to be idle between one and five in the afternoon?"

"No," she said, "I did not."

She put her arms behind her head, and closed her eyes.

"In England," she said, "people never sleep in the afternoon. It must be a custom peculiar to your countrymen. But in the meanwhile, what are we going to do until my clothes are dry?" He watched her, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"In France," he said, "they would tell you there is only one thing we could do. But perhaps that also is a custom peculiar to my countrymen."

She did not answer. Then leaning forward he stretched out his hand, and very gently he began to unscrew the ruby from her left ear.