Rantaine took a side-way glance at the revolver.
"As you say, Rantaine, it is a pretty tool. Perhaps it is only loaded with powder; but what does that matter? A report would be enough to bring an armed force – and I have six barrels here."
The measured sound of the oars became very distinct. The boat was not far off.
The tall man regarded the little man curiously. Sieur Clubin spoke in a voice more and more soft and subdued.
"Rantaine, the men in the boat which is coming, knowing what you did here just now, would lend a hand and help to arrest you. You are to pay Captain Zuela ten thousand francs for your passage. You would have made a better bargain, by the way, with the smugglers of Pleinmont; but they would only have taken you to England; and besides, you cannot risk going to Guernsey, where they have the pleasure of knowing you. To return, then, to the position of affairs – if I fire, you are arrested. You are to pay Zuela for your passage ten thousand francs. You have already paid him five thousand in advance. Zuela would keep the five thousand and be gone. These are the facts. Rantaine, you have managed your masquerading very well. That hat – that queer coat – and those gaiters make a wonderful change. You forgot the spectacles; but did right to let your whiskers grow."
Rantaine smiled spasmodically. Clubin continued:
"Rantaine, you have on a pair of American breeches, with a double fob. In one side you keep your watch. Take care of it."
"Thank you, Sieur Clubin."
"In the other is a little box made of wrought iron, which opens and shuts with a spring. It is an old sailor's tobacco-box. Take it out of your pocket, and throw it over to me."
"Why, this is robbery."
"You are at liberty to call the coast-guardman."
And Clubin fixed his eye on Rantaine.
"Stay, Mess Clubin," said Rantaine, making a slight forward movement, and holding out his open hand.
The title "Mess" was a delicate flattery.
"Stay where you are, Rantaine."
"Mess Clubin, let us come to terms. I offer you half."
Clubin crossed his arms, still showing the barrels of his revolver.
"Rantaine, what do you take me for? I am an honest man."
And he added after a pause:
"I must have the whole."
Rantaine muttered between his teeth, "This fellow's of a stern sort."
The eye of Clubin lighted up, his voice became clear and sharp as steel. He cried:
"I see that you are labouring under a mistake. Robbery is your name, not mine. My name is Restitution. Hark you, Rantaine. Ten years ago you left Guernsey one night, taking with you the cash-box of a certain partnership concern, containing fifty thousand francs which belonged to you, but forgetting to leave behind you fifty thousand francs which were the property of another. Those fifty thousand francs, the money of your partner, the excellent and worthy Mess Lethierry, make at present, at compound interest, calculated for ten years, eighty thousand six hundred and sixty-six francs. You went into a money-changer's yesterday. I'll give you his name – Rébuchet, in St. Vincent Street. You counted out to him seventy-six thousand francs in French bank-notes; in exchange for which he gave you three notes of the Bank of England for one thousand pounds sterling each, plus the exchange. You put these bank-notes in the iron tobacco-box, and the iron tobacco-box into your double fob on the right-hand side. On the part of Mess Lethierry, I shall be content with that. I start to-morrow for Guernsey, and intend to hand it to him. Rantaine, the three-master lying-to out yonder is the Tamaulipas. You have had your luggage put aboard there with the other things belonging to the crew. You want to leave France. You have your reasons. You are going to Arequipa. The boat is coming to fetch you. You are awaiting it. It is at hand. You can hear it. It depends on me whether you go or stay. No more words. Fling me the tobacco-box."
Rantaine dipped his hand in the fob, drew out a little box, and threw it to Clubin. It was the iron tobacco-box. It fell and rolled at Clubin's feet.
Clubin knelt without lowering his gaze; felt about for the box with his left hand, keeping all the while his eyes and the six barrels of the revolver fixed upon Rantaine.
Then he cried:
"Turn your back, my friend."
Rantaine turned his back.
Sieur Clubin put the revolver under one arm, and touched the spring of the tobacco-box. The lid flew open.
It contained four bank-notes; three of a thousand pounds, and one of ten pounds.
He folded up the three bank-notes of a thousand pounds each, replaced them in the iron tobacco-box, shut the lid again, and put it in his pocket.
Then he picked up a stone, wrapped it in the ten-pound note, and said:
"You may turn round again."
Rantaine turned.
Sieur Clubin continued:
"I told you I would be contented with three thousand pounds. Here, I return you ten pounds."
And he threw to Rantaine the note enfolding the stone.
Rantaine, with a movement of his foot, sent the bank-note and the stone into the sea.
"As you please," said Clubin. "You must be rich. I am satisfied."
The noise of oars, which had been continually drawing nearer during the dialogue, ceased. They knew by this that the boat had arrived at the base of the cliff.
"Your vehicle waits below. You can go, Rantaine."
Rantaine advanced towards the steps of stones, and rapidly disappeared.
Clubin moved cautiously towards the edge of the escarpment, and watched him descending.
The boat had stopped near the last stage of the rocks, at the very spot where the coast-guardman had fallen.
Still observing Rantaine stepping from stone to stone, Clubin muttered:
"A good number 619. He thought himself alone. Rantaine thought there were only two there. I alone knew that there were three."
He perceived at his feet the telescope which had dropped from the hands of the coast-guardman.
The sound of oars was heard again. Rantaine had stepped into the boat, and the rowers had pushed out to sea.
When Rantaine was safely in the boat, and the cliff was beginning to recede from his eyes, he arose again abruptly. His features were convulsed with rage; he clenched his fist and cried:
"Ha! he is the devil himself; a villain!"
A few seconds later, Clubin, from the top of the rock, while bringing his telescope to bear upon the boat, heard distinctly the following words articulated by a loud voice, and mingling with the noise of the sea:
"Sieur Clubin, you are an honest man; but you will not be offended if I write to Lethierry to acquaint him with this matter; and we have here in the boat a sailor from Guernsey, who is one of the crew of the Tamaulipas; his name is Ahier-Tostevin, and he will return to St. Malo on Zuela's next voyage, to bear testimony to the fact of my having returned to you, on Mess Lethierry's account, the sum of three thousand pounds sterling."
It was Rantaine's voice.
Clubin rarely did things by halves. Motionless as the coast-guardman had been, and in the exact same place, his eye still at the telescope, he did not lose sight of the boat for one moment. He saw it growing less amidst the waves; watched it disappear and reappear, and approach the vessel, which was lying-to; finally he recognised the tall figure of Rantaine on the deck of the Tamaulipas.
When the boat was raised, and slung again to the davits, the Tamaulipas was in motion once more. The land-breeze was fresh, and she spread all her sails. Clubin's glass continued fixed upon her outline growing more and more indistinct; until half an hour later, when the Tamaulipas had become only a dark shape upon the horizon, growing smaller and smaller against the pale twilight in the sky.
IX
USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PERSONS WHO EXPECT OR FEAR THE ARRIVAL OF LETTERS FROM BEYOND SEA
On that evening, Sieur Clubin returned late.
One of the causes of his delay was, that before going to his inn, he had paid a visit to the Dinan gate of the town, a place where there were several wine-shops. In one of these wine-shops, where he was not known, he had bought a bottle of brandy, which he placed in the pocket of his overcoat, as if he desired to conceal it. Then, as the Durande was to start on the following morning, he had taken a turn aboard to satisfy himself that everything was in order.
When Sieur Clubin returned to the Jean Auberge, there was no one left in the lower room except the old sea-captain, M. Gertrais-Gaboureau, who was drinking a jug of ale and smoking his pipe.
M. Gertrais-Gaboureau saluted Sieur Clubin between a whiff and a draught of ale.
"How d'ye do, Captain Clubin?"
"Good evening, Captain Gertrais."
"Well, the Tamaulipas is gone."
"Ah!" said Clubin, "I did not observe."
Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau expectorated, and said:
"Zuela has decamped."
"When was that?"
"This evening."
"Where is he gone?"
"To the devil."
"No doubt; but where is that?"
"To Arequipa."
"I knew nothing of it," said Clubin.
He added:
"I am going to bed."
He lighted his candle, walked towards the door, and returned.
"Have you ever been at Arequipa, Captain?"
"Yes; some years ago."
"Where do they touch on that voyage?"
"A little everywhere; but the Tamaulipas will touch nowhere."
M. Gertrais-Gaboureau emptied his pipe upon the corner of a plate and continued:
"You know the lugger called the Trojan Horse, and that fine three-master, the Trentemouzin, which are gone to Cardiff? I was against their sailing on account of the weather. They have returned in a fine state. The lugger was laden with turpentine; she sprang a leak, and in working the pumps they pumped up with the water all her cargo. As to the three-master, she has suffered most above water. Her cutwater, her headrail, the stock of her larboard anchor are broken. Her standing jibboom is gone clean by the cap. As for the jib-shrouds and bobstays, go and see what they look like. The mizenmast is not injured, but has had a severe shock. All the iron of the bowsprit has given way; and it is an extraordinary fact that, though the bowsprit itself is not scratched, it is completely stripped. The larboard-bow of the vessel is stove in a good three feet square. This is what comes of not taking advice."
Clubin had placed the candle on the table, and had begun to readjust a row of pins which he kept in the collar of his overcoat. He continued:
"Didn't you say, Captain, that the Tamaulipas would not touch anywhere?"
"Yes; she goes direct to Chili."
"In that case, she can send no news of herself on the voyage."
"I beg your pardon, Captain Clubin. In the first place, she can send any letters by vessels she may meet sailing for Europe."
"That is true."
"Then there is the ocean letter-box."
"What do you mean by the ocean letter-box?"
"Don't you know what that is, Captain Clubin?"
"No."
"When you pass the straits of Magellan – "
"Well."
"Snow all round you; always bad weather; ugly down-easters, and bad seas."
"Well."
"When you have doubled Cape Monmouth – "
"Well, what next?"
"Then you double Cape Valentine."
"And then?"
"Why, then you double Cape Isidore."
"And afterwards?"
"You double Point Anne."
"Good. But what is it you call the ocean letter-box?"
"We are coming to that. Mountains on the right, mountains on the left. Penguins and stormy petrels all about. A terrible place. Ah! by Jove, what a howling and what cracks you get there! The hurricane wants no help. That's the place for holding on to the sheer-rails; for reefing topsails. That's where you take in the mainsail, and fly the jibsail; or take in the jibsail and try the stormjib. Gusts upon gusts! And then, sometimes four, five, or six days of scudding under bare poles. Often only a rag of canvas left. What a dance! Squalls enough to make a three-master skip like a flea. I saw once a cabin-boy hanging on to the jibboom of an English brig, the True Blue, knocked, jibboom and all, to ten thousand nothings. Fellows are swept into the air there like butterflies. I saw the second mate of the Revenue, a pretty schooner, knocked from under the forecross-tree, and killed dead. I have had my sheer-rails smashed, and come out with all my sails in ribbons. Frigates of fifty guns make water like wicker baskets. And the damnable coast! Nothing can be imagined more dangerous. Rocks all jagged-edged. You come, by and by, to Port Famine. There it's worse and worse. The worst seas I ever saw in my life. The devil's own latitudes. All of a sudden you spy the words, painted in red, 'Post Office.'"
"What do you mean, Captain Gertrais?"
"I mean, Captain Clubin, that immediately after doubling Point Anne you see, on a rock, a hundred feet high, a great post with a barrel suspended to the top. This barrel is the letter-box. The English sailors must needs go and write up there 'Post Office.' What had they to do with it? It is the ocean post-office. It isn't the property of that worthy gentleman, the King of England. The box is common to all. It belongs to every flag. Post Office! there's a crack-jaw word for you. It produces an effect on me as if the devil had suddenly offered me a cup of tea. I will tell you now how the postal arrangements are carried out. Every vessel which passes sends to the post a boat with despatches. A vessel coming from the Atlantic, for instance, sends there its letters for Europe; and a ship coming from the Pacific, its letters for New Zealand or California. The officer in command of the boat puts his packet into the barrel, and takes away any packet he finds there. You take charge of these letters, and the ship which comes after you takes charge of yours. As ships are always going to and fro, the continent whence you come is that to which I am going. I carry your letters; you carry mine. The barrel is made fast to the post with a chain. And it rains, snows and hails! A pretty sea. The imps of Satan fly about on every side. The Tamaulipas will pass there. The barrel has a good lid with a hinge, but no padlock. You see, a fellow can write to his friends this way. The letters come safely."
"It is very curious," muttered Clubin thoughtfully.
Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau returned to his bottle of ale.
"If that vagabond Zuela should write (continued Clubin aside), the scoundrel puts his scrawl into the barrel at Magellan, and in four months I have his letter."
"Well, Captain Clubin, do you start to-morrow?"
Clubin, absorbed in a sort of somnambulism, did not notice the question; and Captain Gertrais repeated it.
Clubin woke up.
"Of course, Captain Gertrais. It is my day. I must start to-morrow morning."
"If it was my case, I shouldn't, Captain Clubin. The hair of the dog's coat feels damp. For two nights past, the sea-birds have been flying wildly round the lanthorn of the lighthouse. A bad sign. I have a storm-glass, too, which gives me a warning. The moon is at her second quarter; it is the maximum of humidity. I noticed to-day some pimpernels with their leaves shut, and a field of clover with its stalks all stiff. The worms come out of the ground to-day; the flies sting; the bees keep close to their hives; the sparrows chatter together. You can hear the sound of bells from far off. I heard to-night the Angelus at St. Lunaire. And then the sun set angry. There will be a good fog to-morrow, mark my words. I don't advise you to put to sea. I dread the fog a good deal more than a hurricane. It's a nasty neighbour that."
BOOK VI
THE DRUNKEN STEERSMAN AND THE SOBER CAPTAIN
I
THE DOUVRES
At about five leagues out, in the open sea, to the south of Guernsey, opposite Pleinmont Point, and between the Channel Islands and St. Malo, there is a group of rocks, called the Douvres. The spot is dangerous.
This term Douvres, applied to rocks and cliffs, is very common. There is, for example, near the Côtes du Nord, a Douvre, on which a lighthouse is now being constructed, a dangerous reef; but one which must not be confounded with the rock above referred to.
The nearest point on the French coast to the Douvres is Cape Bréhat. The Douvres are a little further from the coast of France than from the nearest of the Channel Islands. The distance from Jersey may be pretty nearly measured by the extreme length of Jersey. If the island of Jersey could be turned round upon Corbière, as upon a hinge, St. Catherine's Point would almost touch the Douvres, at a distance of more than four leagues.
In these civilised regions the wildest rocks are rarely desert places. Smugglers are met with at Hagot, custom-house men at Binic, Celts at Bréhat, oyster-dredgers at Cancale, rabbit-shooters at Césambre or Cæsar's Island, crab-gatherers at Brecqhou, trawlers at the Minquiers, dredgers at Ecréhou, but no one is ever seen upon the Douvres.
The sea birds alone make their home there.
No spot in the ocean is more dreaded. The Casquets, where it is said the Blanche Nef was lost; the Bank of Calvados; the Needles in the Isle of Wight; the Ronesse, which makes the coast of Beaulieu so dangerous; the sunken reefs at Préel, which block the entrance to Merquel, and which necessitates the red-painted beacon in twenty fathoms of water, the treacherous approaches to Etables and Plouha; the two granite Druids to the south of Guernsey, the Old Anderlo and the Little Anderlo, the Corbière, the Hanways, the Isle of Ras, associated with terror in the proverb:
"Si jamais tu passes le Ras,
Si tu ne meurs, tu trembleras."
the Mortes-Femmes, the Déroute between Guernsey and Jersey, the Hardent between the Minquiers and Chousey, the Mauvais Cheval between Bouley Bay and Barneville, have not so evil a reputation. It would be preferable to have to encounter all these dangers, one after the other, than the Douvres once.
In all that perilous sea of the Channel, which is the Egean of the West, the Douvres have no equal in their terrors, except the Paternoster between Guernsey and Sark.
From the Paternoster, however, it is possible to give a signal – a ship in distress there may obtain succour. To the north rises Dicard or D'Icare Point, and to the south Grosnez. From the Douvres you can see nothing.
Its associations are the storm, the cloud, the wild sea, the desolate waste, the uninhabited coast. The blocks of granite are hideous and enormous – everywhere perpendicular wall – the severe inhospitality of the abyss.
It is in the open sea; the water about is very deep. A rock completely isolated like the Douvres attracts and shelters creatures which shun the haunts of men. It is a sort of vast submarine cave of fossil coral branches – a drowned labyrinth. There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes, wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennæ, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl about seeking their prey.
To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There, in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantom-like, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.
Forty years ago, two rocks of singular form signalled the Douvres from afar to passers on the ocean. They were two vertical points, sharp and curved – their summits almost touching each other. They looked like the two tusks of an elephant rising out of the sea; but they were tusks, high as tall towers, of an elephant huge as a mountain. These two natural towers, rising out of the obscure home of marine monsters, only left a narrow passage between them, where the waves rushed through. This passage, tortuous and full of angles, resembled a straggling street between high walls. The two twin rocks are called the Douvres. There was the Great Douvre and the Little Douvre; one was sixty feet high, the other forty. The ebb and flow of the tide had at last worn away part of the base of the towers, and a violent equinoctial gale on the 26th of October, 1859, overthrew one of them. The smaller one, which still remains, is worn and tottering.
One of the most singular of the Douvres is a rock known as "The Man." This still exists. Some fisherman in the last century visiting this spot found on the height of the rock a human body. By its side were a number of empty sea-shells. A sailor escaped from shipwreck had found a refuge there; had lived some time upon rock limpets, and had died. Hence its name of "The Man."
The solitudes of the sea are peculiarly dismal. The things which pass there seem to have no relation to the human race; their objects are unknown. Such is the isolation of the Douvres. All around, as far as eye can reach, spreads the vast and restless sea.