The Rover
IX
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 hoard—and 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 sea-horizon. 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{139} 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{140} 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 judgment—and 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 tartane’s 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 half-deck 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 half-deck, 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 air. He would not have touched it for
anything.
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{141} 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 eyes casually, Peyrol
noticed the broken rope, and at once put his hand on the man’s breast.
“His heart beats yet,” he murmured. “Go and light the cabin lamp,
Michel.”
“You going to take that thing into the cabin?”
“Yes,” said Peyrol. “The cabin is used to that kind of thing,” and
suddenly he felt very bitter. “It has been a death-trap for better
people than this fellow, whoever he is.”
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 clasp-knife 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{142} 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 to the ear of that inanimate head, yelled with all
the force of his lungs:{143}
“Hullo! Hullo! Wake up, shipmate!”
It seemed enough to wake up the dead. A faint “Voilà! Voilà!” 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.
“You called, maître?”
“Yes,” said Peyrol. “Come along and help me to shift him.”
“Overboard?” murmured Michel readily.
“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
anybody will trouble you to-night. I am going to the house.”
“The day is not very far off,” remarked Michel.
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 again in his life, he received
those instructions without particular emotion.
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 man-of-war’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{144} 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 Réal 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 after-deck 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
again. Michel reported:
“This is the third time he starts this game.{145}”
“Not much strength in this,” remarked Peyrol gravely.
“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 added his opinion: “He will go on like that for ever. You
can’t stop him.”
“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 few words of a foreign language.
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 forward and keep a lookout.
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 heard
many years ago, stopped it by a deep-voiced:
“That will do.” After a short silence he added: “You look bien malade,
hein? What you call sick,” in a tone which if not tender was certainly
not hostile. “We will remedy that.{146}”
“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 head?”
“It was me,” admitted Peyrol, sitting down on the opposite side of the
table and leaning back to look at his prisoner comfortably.
“What the devil did you do that for?” inquired the other with a sort of
faint fierceness which left Peyrol unmoved.
“Because you put your nose where you no business. Understand? I see you
there under the moon, penché, eating my tartane with your eyes. You
never hear me, hein?”
“I believe you walked on air. Did you mean to kill me?”
“Yes, in preference to letting you go and make a story of it on board
your cursed corvette.”
“Well then, now’s your chance to finish me. I am as weak as a kitten.”
“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 good
drink—that.”
Symons’ state was as though the blow had robbed{147} 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 felling him like a bullock.”
Peyrol nodded calmly and sipped from his mug.
“If I had met you anywhere else but looking at my tartane I would have
done nothing to you. I would have permitted you to go back to your boat.
Where was your damned boat?”
“How can I tell you? I can’t tell where I am. I’ve never been here
before. How long have I been here?”
“Oh, about fourteen hours,” said Peyrol.
“My head feels as if it would fall off if I moved,” grumbled the
other.... “You are a damned bungler, that’s what you are.”
“What for—bungler?”
“For not finishing me off at once.”
He seized the mug and emptied it down his throat. Peyrol drank too,
observing him all the time. He put the mug down with extreme gentleness
and said slowly:
“How could I know it was you? I hit hard enough to crack the skull of
any other man.{148}”
“What do you mean? What do you know about my skull? What are you driving
at? I don’t know you, you white-headed villain, going about at night
knocking people on the head from behind. Did you do for our officer,
too?”
“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 thought I would climb a
little higher amongst the rocks....”
He paused drowsily.
“That was a silly thing to do,” remarked Peyrol in an encouraging voice.
“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 I 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 clasp-knife 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 spread your wings and fly.{149}”
“You need not have been afraid for your tartane. Our boat was after no
tartane. We wouldn’t have taken your tartane for a gift. Why, we see
them by dozens every day—those tartanes.”
Peyrol filled the two mugs again. “Ah,” he said, “I dare say you see
many tartanes, but this one is not like the others. You a sailor—and
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.
“Oh lord, I feel as though I had been drunk for a month.”
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. Liberty—to hold your own in the
world if you could. Equality—yes! But no body of men ever accomplished{150}
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 Poigne-de-Fer, 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 was never the same man again.
It had been a great display.
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,
simple-minded 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{151} on the occasion of that wound, which had
neither killed nor cowed Peyrol but merely had given him an opportunity
to reflect at leisure on the conduct of his own life.
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 Englishmen that he used to depend most.
And so that youngster had turned into this English man-of-war’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{152} 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 Réal. 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.
“Sacrée tête 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 black-ringletted French Brother in the prime of
life of whom everybody thought so much. Peyrol was roused by hearing the
other declare suddenly:
“I am an Englishman, I am. I am not going to knuckle under to anybody.
What are you going to do with me?”
“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, but—be—quick—about it.”
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{153} let him drink the mugful standing there, it would make him dead
drunk. But he took the risk. So he said only:
“Allons—drink!” The other did not wait for a second invitation but
could not control very well the movements of his arm extended towards
the mug. Peyrol raised his on high.
“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 will have to explain to me first
what you meant by knocking me on the head.”
He drank, staring all the time at Peyrol in a manner which was meant to
give offence but which struck Peyrol as so childlike that he burst into
a laugh.
“Sacré imbécile, 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 a—what do you call them?—lièvre.”
The other, who was feeling the effect of the drink, stared with frank
incredulity.
“You are of no account,” continued Peyrol. “Ah! if you had been an
officer I would have gone for you anywhere. Did you say your officer
went up the gully?”
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.{154} There is half a company of infantry
billeted in the farm.”
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 trouble as he could.
“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 me ashore.”
Peyrol only shook his head deprecatingly.
“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 prison—eh? You
ai{155}n’t going to keep me in this damned dog-hole, on board your rubbishy
tartane. Go and get that corporal, I tell you.”
He looked suddenly very tired and only murmured: “I am an Englishman, I
am.”
Peyrol’s patience was positively angelic.
“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 pied-de-nez, what you call thumb to the nose, to all
your English cruisers. I do not mind telling you because you are my
prisoner. You will soon learn French now.”
“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
expeditions, the coxswain of the gig and his own infernal luck.
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 marinero” made their way out of his lips in a
sort of death-bed 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 that tiny bottle of yours.”
“No,” said Peyrol, drawing the demijohn to his side of the table and
putting the cork in.{156}
“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 the 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 after-deck 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 to-morrow sometime.”
“But what am I to do?” asked Michel timidly.
“Nothing,” said Peyrol. “Of course you must not let him set fire to the
tartane.”
“But suppose,” insisted Michel, “he should give signs of escaping.”
“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 would just swallow you at one mouthful.”
He picked up his cudgel and, stepping ashore, went{157} 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 dignity from the utter and absolute blankness that came over it.{158}