Chapter VII

Sloop and _flambart_ set out each for its own port to repair damages.

After the collision Florimond had examined into the state of his boat, and had judged it such as to make speedy repairs a necessity. The _Bon-Pêcheur_ was injured in her dead works only, but she had lost her figure-head, carried away by the same blow as the bowsprit, and her cut-water was stove. Moreover the tearing of her planking to starboard threatened to let in the water, and with her timbers started in the bow she could not have borne a heavy head sea.

Temporary repairs were promptly made. The wound in the planking was dressed within by a solid facing of board and without was staunched with a compress. A great piece of sail was smeared with a thick coating of a waterproof dressing made of tow, tar, and tallow, and this was then spread like a great plaster over the injured place.

The cracks in the cut-water disappeared under a sheathing tightly nailed, and finally the only extra mast which the boat owned, a mizzen mast, was made to do duty as a bowsprit. It weighed a little heavily on the bow, already too weak, and made the boat pitch violently, straining her in her seams.

There was no doubt that it would have been wise to put into some Scotch roadstead, but Florimond preferred to run all risks and try to make his own port. Nothing is more hateful to a sailor than an enforced stay on land, and a detention of this kind appears to him more annoying and more irksome than ever in a strange country.

Florimond, besides, was impatient to begin legal proceedings before the maritime authorities. He had seen enough of the _flambart_ to enable him to identify her, and had no need of further evidence to prove his charges and obtain speedy damages for his injuries.

He was not troubled at all as to Firmin. Pirates of the North Sea are pillagers and stealers of nets, but they do not eat men, and if they kept the boy it was more from a fear of seeing him drown than from a desire to hurt him. Surprised at being identified in the sudden lifting of the fog, they would not have wished to add to their misdeeds the chances of a death which would weigh heavily in the balance with their judges.

There remained the canoe. As to this Florimond was more troubled. He tried in vain to imagine how the four men had become separated from Firmin, and what direction they had taken. If his sloop had not been damaged he would have recovered the boy in order to find out; but he had been too much troubled in the confusion of the unexpected collision to think of saving anything beyond his crew and his boat.

The _Bon-Pêcheur_ sailed south, while the _flambart_ fled eastward. Elise followed with an inert glance the strange craft which was carrying away the only being for whom she cared to live. Then her first feeling of stupor gave way, and she regained her self-control.

The _flambart_ was not yet more than two cable-lengths distant.

It had not taken the wind, and it would be child’s play to overtake her. As she watched her, still so close at hand, a distant cry made her start. Her child, the boy whom she loved, whom she had always loved, was struggling not to be carried away.

Stirred in every fibre of her being she drew herself up, resolute and strong to defend the rights of outraged affection. Running to the helm where Florimond was, she seized it with her two hands as if to bring the boat about.

“Tack, cousin, I must get my boy.”

“You are a fool, Elise. We shall have heavy enough work as it is, if the weather does not favor us.”

“I do not care, I wish my boy.”

“Then go and get him alone, the boat shall not carry you.”

“Oh, cousin! I beseech you. It will take less than half an hour.”

“The wind would not take as much time as that to throw us on our beam-ends.”

“Cousin, I promise you to be quick. We need not come alongside, the boy shall jump overboard. I will make myself fast to a rope and pick him up.”

“Elise, be quiet. I have not even five minutes to lose. The slightest squall would stave in our sides. I shall not have a moment’s peace until we have reached port.”

“Cousin Florimond, it is killing me to know that my Firmin is among those pirates.”

“Why do you let your imagination run away with you? Do you not know that they will send him back by the first boat? Is it not the custom?”

“Cousin, cousin, hurry! The _flambart_ is off.”

“Elise, let go! I will not risk everything for your wretched brother. Let go!”

Elise did not let go of the helm. One would have said that, holding herself thus fast to the soul of the boat, she imagined that she could persuade it to stop and act as she wished.

But Florimond’s patience was exhausted at her persistence. She raised to him her great black eyes, firm and beseeching, and he was not able to bear the trouble which he saw in them.

“Away there! _Tonnerre!_ Away there, Elise! Do you think you are captain now because the sailors have flattered you in order to annoy me? Have you ever known me suffer another master than myself on my boat? Away, there!”

He raised his voice, that the men of the crew, who pressed around them, interested in the dispute, could hear clearly.

There was not one who did not approve the skipper’s prudence. At the first seam which shows itself in the side of his floating house the sailor loses confidence, and with that his resolution. When one has nothing between one’s self and death but a wooden box, it is especially necessary that there should be no cracks in the planking. The men remained silent, not able to forget the state of affairs and to take sides. Nevertheless there was an evident sympathy for Elise, a frank admiration for her feeling and her bravery. They experienced a mysterious respect for this creature, so strong in the weakness of her sex; for this young girl, vigorous and gentle, whose courage was sure and whose heart was kind. She had shown against danger a resolution which never failed, against injury a pity which nothing discouraged. She had won them over by the strength of her heroic youth, and they gave her their full support and confidence.

Before her they did not dare to be ill-natured, or to let her see their rough ways. They were eager to show their skill and courage, to run without hesitation in heavy weather along the gunwale, to walk erect on the bowsprit, and to play like monkeys in the rigging. Each showed his best side and, through the force of example, Elise was the cause of an increased discipline.

All this was to Florimond a cause of jealousy and continual ill-feeling. The more this strange influence on his boat increased the less was he able to stand it. He suffered from envy and mortification, and these make even kind hearts unjust.

In fact he regretted already that he had not managed by prompt action to rescue Firmin. In his inmost conscience he reproached himself for his hardness; but, wounded in his vanity, he would rather have died at the helm than have changed his first refusal, and so have seemed to yield to the ascendancy of Elise.

At this moment Barnabé came on deck, hardly yet well, but drawn thither by the excitement of recent events. He waddled pompously forward. Under the bandages and rags in which half his head was tied up, his round nose, his little alert eye, and his black moustache gave him quite a military swagger. He immediately took a hand in the discussion, with his customary arrogant tone. He did not know the cause of the dispute, but he was not accustomed to being embarrassed by any such trifle as that, and his only thought was to be revenged on Florimond.

Being the last to arrive he found himself, as he was a short man, out of sight behind the tall figures of his comrades. He saw that his voice could not be heard. Jumping upward he caught a rope, climbed it, and hung fast to it like a cat, and then, as much at his ease as an orator in his pulpit, delivered his harangue. He spoke as brawlers everywhere do, for the pleasure of hearing his own voice, and without realizing that, in these first moments of uneasiness, his audience did not care in the least for his twaddle.

“Hold your tongue, Barnabé,” cried the skipper. “We don’t want to hear you; one has better things to do than to listen to the squalling of a fool, when one fears a storm.”

“Does the truth then trouble you? If you wish to injure Lison, it is because you are jealous. She is worth more than you.”

This apostrophe had no connection with the subject of debate, but it agreed very well with the real feeling of the sailors. They all smiled grimly as they looked at Florimond, who turned the tables by saying:

“There is no time for laughing, pack of simpletons. Do you remember that our bow is as cracked as Barnabé’s head?”

With the weak vacillation of the ignorant they lost their smiles instantly, but the landsman was not vanquished:

“If Lison had had charge of the boat, it would not have been injured.”

“Be quiet, Barnabé,” cried Elise, “we are wasting valuable time in foolish talk. My brother Firmin is carried off on the _flambart_. I want to go after him.”

“Of course! We must tack,” shouted Barnabé.

He waited for the effect of this demand. But the sailors did not move, held back this time by the fury of the skipper, who cried in a rage:

“Hold your tongue! Do you wish the boat to be lost on account of this wretched girl? Is it not enough that we have lost our season through her? Since she has been on board we have had nothing but bad luck.”

He pushed Elise roughly from the helm. Overcome by the cruelty of fate she burst into a torrent of tears. From her black eyes, swimming in sadness, the bitter drops gushed hot and tumultuous, as though the source of bitterness and woe was inexhaustible. Her chest heaved under her distressing sobs, and a feeling of rude sadness, of instinctive pity seized all the men at the sight of her grief and misery.

“Shall we abandon her in her trouble?” shouted Barnabé. “We must tack! It is only cowards who make women weep. Come on! Seize the tiller!”

The group of sailors was stirred by an involuntary thrill. Florimond feared the unchaining of the tempest, if he were not firm. With his strong hand he snatched the tiller from its socket, and raised it with all the strength of his mighty arm.

“_Tonnerre!_ Here it is! Who wants the tiller? who wants it?”

He made it whirl about him threateningly. All the men recoiled instinctively, and slipping down his rope Barnabé cunningly took shelter behind his companions.

“Who wants it? _Tonnerre!_”

No one, evidently, was anxious for it, for no man moved.

At this moment the sloop gave a plaintive groan, a yawning of her plastered seams.

“Do you hear how she wheezes in the chest? She breathes hard. Hoist the top-sail!”

It was done. When she saw the sloop with all sails spread, Elise felt that her last hope was gone. Quickly, through the veil of her tears, she turned her eyes toward the _flambart,_ which was disappearing on the eastern horizon, and, with lacerated feelings and bleeding heart, abandoned herself to the depths of her sorrow.

* * * * *

For four days and four nights the _Bon-Pêcheur_ ran at the same speed without shifting a sail. In one straight flight she passed through the North Sea, entered the straits of Calais, and found herself again in the familiar waters of the English Channel.

But with her change of sea, she had a change of wind. These sudden changes are very common in these waters. One would have said that the breeze was angry at the impatience of the _Bon-Pêcheur_, and that it changed in order to hinder her presumptuous flight.

If she could only get under way! For an hour her large hull had ceased to slip proudly through the waves, and was tossing a little heavily. There was a risk of opening her wound. If she could only get under way! Yonder in the wind’s eye, a squall was brewing. In advance of the great clouds, which rolled in gray whirls, rose a broad band of sombre yellow, like a cliff of wind and rain. They are not at all pleasant to meet, these briny coast squalls, behind each one of which hide twenty others, ready to follow in wild, endless uproar.

The band of yellow spread. It covered half the sky, and its outlines reached the zenith. It drew near, driven by a furious wind, and borne on a rushing wave, like a moving wall of water, ready to crash down. In a quarter of an hour it covered the whole heavens, while before it ran three waves, avant-couriers, who preceded it for some minutes, as if to announce the tempest.

If the _Bon-Pêcheur_ had only not lost so much time. It had hardly taken in any sail, it was as full of bravado as if it wished to meet the squall, and be driven along by it. It was approaching its port. Already had it passed the sands of Gris-Nez and the chalky rocks of Boulogne, it had seen again the light-house of Etaples, it had heard the buoy which whistles on the shoals of Berck, and the buoy of the Vergoyer. There the sea is the shallowest in those waters. The bottom lies little over twenty feet below the surface. The surf foams and breaks as strongly as on the coast. It is heavy enough to capsize any boat.

It was toward this spot that the north-east wind, which had held for the last hour, was blowing. If it should suddenly get the _Bon-Pêcheur_ in its clutch, it would drive her to this Vergoyer, whence escape was impossible. Never can it be known how many men and boats have been engulfed by these eddies, hardly three thousand feet wide. At its very name Elise had a shiver of fright. For it was this accursed Vergoyer which had made her an orphan, and which still kept jealously the bodies of her father and his six companions, refusing to deliver them up to the land they loved so well.

Florimond was at the helm. For four days he had hardly left it. Less than ever in the hour of peril would he entrust to other hands the fortunes of his boat. With his steady eye, and that skill in handling her which never forsook him, he had fought the _Bon-Pêcheur_ against the treacherous sea; refusing all rest, having his meals brought to him, and eating with one hand while he steered with the other. In this half week he had not slept five hours. His cheeks were burning with fever, and his clear eyes were dimmed and seemed sunk deep into his head.

It was because he knew and feared this sea, which was so quickly angry; this sea which supports life, but which also destroys it.