Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (617 page)

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 spick-and-span 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 nerveless hands clasped his legs loosely. He was the very image of dejection.

``H, Michel! Come here and cast loose the citizen. It is only fair that he should be untied for a little excursion at sea.’’

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 life.’’

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 motion. A vaguely contented smile lighted up Michel’s hairy countenance.

``She feels the sea,’’ said Peyrol, who enjoyed the swift movement of his vessel. ``This is different from your lagoon, Michel.’’

``To be sure,’’ said Michel with becoming gravity.

``Doesn’t it seem funny to you, as you look back at the shore, to think that you have left nothing and nobody behind?’’

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 matre’’ was a serious matter demanding great and concentrated attention.

``Possibly,’’ he murmured, looking strangely self-conscious.

``Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,’’ said the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along the head of the peninsula. ``You have not even a dog to miss you.’’

``I have only you, Matre Peyrol.’’

``That’s what I was thinking,’’ said Peyrol half to himself, while Michel, who had good sea-legs, 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 extended his open palm towards Michel.

``Put your hand in there,’’ he said.

Michel hesitated for a moment before this extraordinary proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol, holding the bereaved fisherman’s hand in a powerful grip, said:

``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 philosophy:

``Somebody must be last in this world.’’

``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 days, had a moment of buoyancy — -the illusion of immense freedom.

At that moment Ral, 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 Ral 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 Ral’s lungs. He shouted it only once, and about five minutes afterwards appeared at the kitchen-door, panting, streaming with water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom of the sea. In the tall-backed 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 Ral first saw him, Peyrol could not yet see the English ship, and held confidently on his course up the middle of the strait. The man-of-war 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 man-of-war, noticing the manuvre, 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 manuvre. Coasting craft as a rule were not afraid of the Amelia. After taking a few turns on the quarter-deck he ordered Symons to be called aft.

The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure, which had been the only subject of talk on board the corvette for the last twenty-four hours, came along rolling, hat in hand, and enjoying a secret sense of his importance.

``Take the glass,’’ said the captain, ``and have a look at that vessel under the land. Is she anything like the tartane that you say you have been aboard of?’’

Symons was very positive. ``I think I can swear to those painted mastheads, your honour. It is the last thing I remember before that murderous ruffian knocked me senseless. The moon shone on them. I can make them out now with the glass.’’ As to the fellow boasting to him that the tartane was a dispatch-boat and had already made some trips, well, Symons begged his honour to believe that the beggar was not sober at the time. He did not care what he blurted out. The best proof of his condition was that he went away to fetch the soldiers and forgot to come back. The murderous old ruffian! ``You see, your honour,’ continued Symons, ``he thought I was not likely to escape after getting a blow that would have killed nine out of any ten men. So he went away to boast of what he had done before the people ashore; because one of his chums, worse than himself, came down thinking he would kill me with a dam big manure fork, saving your honour’s presence. A regular savage he was.’’

Symons paused, staring, as if astonished at the marvels of his own tale. The old master, standing at his captain’s elbow, observed in a dispassionate tone that, anyway, that peninsula was not a bad jumping-off place for a craft intending to slip through the blockade. Symons, not being dismissed, waited hat in hand while Captain Vincent directed the master to fill on the ship and stand a little nearer to the battery. It was done, and presently there was a flash of a gun low down on the water’s edge and a shot came skipping in the direction of the Amelia. It fell very short, but Captain Vincent judged the ship was close enough and ordered her to be hove to again. Then Symons was told to take a look through the glass once more. After a long interval he lowered it and spoke impressively to his captain:

``I can make out three heads aboard, your honour, and one is white. I would swear to that white head anywhere.’’

Captain Vincent made no answer. All this seemed very odd to him; but after all it was possible. The craft had certainly acted suspiciously. He spoke to the first lieutenant in a half-vexed tone.

``He has done a rather smart thing. He will dodge here till dark and then get away. lt is perfectly absurd. I don’t want to send the boats too close to the battery. And if I do he may simply sail away from them and be round the land long before we are ready to give him chase. Darkness will be his best friend. However, we will keep a watch on him in case he is tempted to give us the slip late in the afternoon. In that case we will have a good try to catch him. If he has anything aboard I should like to get hold of it. It may be of some importance, after all.’’

On board the tartane Peyrol put his own interpretation on the ship’s movements. His object had been attained. The corvette had marked him for her prey. Satisfied as to that, Peyrol watched his opportunity and taking advantage of a long squall, with rain thick enough to blur the form of the English ship, he left the shelter of the battery to lead the Englishman a dance and keep up his character of a man anxious to avoid capture.

Ral, from his position on the lookout, saw in the thinning downpour the pointed lateen sails glide round the north end of Porquerolles and vanish behind the land. Some time afterwards the Amelia made sail in a manner that put it beyond doubt that she meant to chase. Her lofty canvas was shut off too presently by the land of Porquerolles. When she had disappeared Ral turned to Arlette.

``Let us go,’’ he said.

Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of Ral at the kitchen door, whom she had taken for a vision of a lost man calling her to follow him to the end of the world, had torn herself out of the old woman’s thin, bony arms which could not cope with the struggles of her body and the fierceness of her spirit. She had run straight to the lookout, though there was nothing to guide her there except a blind impulse to seek Ral wherever he might be. He was not aware of her having found him until she seized hold of his arm with a suddenness, energy and determination of which no one with a clouded mind could have been capable. He felt himself being taken possession of in a way that tore all his scruples out of his breast. Holding on to the trunk of the tree, he threw his other arm round her waist, and when she confessed to him that she did not know why she had run up there, but that if she had not found him she would have thrown herself over the cliff, he tightened his clasp with sudden exultation, as though she had been a gift prayed for instead of a stumbling block for his pedantic conscience. Together they walked back. In the failing light the buildings awaited them, lifeless, the walls darkened by rain and the big slopes of the roofs glistening and sinister under the flying desolation of the clouds. In the kitchen Catherine heard their mingled footsteps, and rigid in the tall armchair awaited their coming. Arlette threw her arms round the old woman’s neck while Ral stood on one side, looking on. Thought after thought flew through his mind and vanished in the strong feeling of the irrevocable nature of the event handing him to the woman whom, in the revulsion of his feelings, he was inclined to think more sane than himself Arlette, with one arm over the old woman’s shoulders, kissed the wrinkled forehead under the white band of linen that, on the erect head, had the effect of a rustic diadem.

``To-morrow you and I will have to walk down to the church.’’

The austere dignity of Catherine’s pose seemed to be shaken by this proposal to lead before the God, with whom she had made her peace long ago, that unhappy girl chosen to share in the guilt of impious and unspeakable horrors which had darkened her mind.

Arlette, still stooping over her aunt’s face, extended a hand towards Ral, who, making a step forward, took it silently into his grasp.

``Oh, yes, you will, Aunt,’’ insisted Arlette. ``You will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom you and I shall never see any more.’’

Catherine’s head dropped, whether in assent or grief; and Ral felt an unexpected and profound emotion, for he, too, was convinced that none of the three persons in the farm would ever see Peyrol again. It was as though the rover of the wide seas had left them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of magnanimity, of a passion weary of itself. However come by, Ral was ready to clasp for ever to his breast that woman touched by the red hand of the Revolution; for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep through the terrors of death, had brought to him the sense of triumphant life.