But as other portions of the land became clearer, there was no doubt that the THROSTLE was right inher bearings; so the skipper gave orders to cast anchor and lower a
boat. The passengers would have pressed him with inquiries as to
what he thought the absence of his landmark could portend; but he
hurried about, and shouted orders, with the deaf despotism of a
nautical commander; and only when all was made ready, turned round
and said, 'Now, sir, maybe you had best let me go ashore first, and
find out how the land lies.'
'Never!' said Berenger, in an agony of impatience.
'I thought so,' said the captain. 'Well, then, sir, are your
fellows ready? Armed? All right.'
So Berenger descended to the boat, followed by Philip; next came
the captain, and then the two serving-men. Six of the crew were
ready to row them to the shore, and were bidden by their captain to
return at once to the vessel, and only return on a signal from him.
the surging rush of intense anxiety, sure to precede the destined
moment of the consummation of hope long deferred, kept Berenger
silent, choked by something between fear and prayer; but Philip,
less engrossed, asked Master Hobbs if it were not strange that none
of the inhabitants of the squalid little huts on the shore had not
put out to greet them in some of the boats that were drawn up on
the beach.
'Poor wretches,' said Hobbs; 'they scarce know friend from foe, and
are slow to run their heads into the lion's mouth. Strange fellows
have the impudence to sail under our flag at times.'
However, as they neared the low, flat, sandy shore, a few red caps
peeped out at the cottage-doors, and then, apparently gaining
confidence from the survey, some wiry, active figures appeared, and
were hailed by Hobbs. His Bordeax trade had rendered him master of
the coast language; and a few incomprehensible shouts between him
and the natives resulted in a line being thrown to them, and the
boat dragged as near as possible to the landing-place, when half a
dozen ran up, splashing with their bare legs, to offer their
shoulders for the transport of the passengers, both of whom were
seized upon before they were aware, Philip struggling with all his
might, till a call from Captain Hobbs warned him to resign himself;
and then he became almost helpless with laughter at the figure cut
by the long-legged Berenger upon a small fisherman's back.
They were landed. Could it be that Berenger was only two miles--
only half an hour's walk form Eustacie? The bound his heart gave
as he touched the shore seemed to stifle him. He could not believe
it. Yet he knew how fully he had believed it, the next moment,
when he listened to what the fishermen were saying to Captain
Hobbs.
'Did Monsieur wish to go to La Sablerie? Ah! then he did not know
what had happened. The soldiers had been there; there had been a
great burning. They had been out in their boats at sea, but they
had seen the sky red--red as a furnace, all night; and the steeple
was down. Surely, Monsieur had missed the steeple that was a guide
to all poor seafarers; and now they had to go all the way to
Brancour to sell their fish.'
'And the townspeople?' Hobbs asked.
'Ah! poor things; 'twas pity of them, for they were honest folk to
deal with, even if they were heretics. They loved fish at other
seasons if not in Lent; and it seemed but a fair return to go up
and bury as many of them as were not burnt to nothing in their
church; and Dom Colombeau, the good priest of Nissard, has said it
was a pious work; and he was a saint, if any one was.'
'Alack, sir,' said Hobbs, laying his hand on the arm of Berenger,
who seemed neither to have breathed nor moved while the man was
speaking: 'I feared that there had been some such bloody work when
I missed the steeple. But take heart yet: your lady is very like
to have been out of the way. We might make for La Rochelle, and
there learn!' Then, again to the fisherman, 'None escaped, fellow?'
'Not one,' replied the man. 'they say that one of the great folks
was in a special rage with them for sheltering the lady he should
have wedded, but who had broken convent and turned heretic; and
they had victualled Montgomery's pirates too.'
'And the lady?' continued Hobbs, ever trying to get a more
supporting hold of his young charge, in case the rigid tension of
his limbs should suddenly relax.'
'I cannot tell, sir. I am a poor fisher; but I could guide you to
the place where old Gillot is always poking about. He listened to
their preachings, and knows more than we do.'
'Let us go,' said Berenger, at once beginning to stride along in
his heavy boots through the deep sand. Philip, who had hardly
understood a word of the patois, caught hold of him, and begged
to be told what had happened; but Master Hobbs drew the boy off,
and explained to him and to the two men what were the dreadful
tidings that had wrought such a change in Berenger's demeanour.
The way over the shifting sands was toilsome enough to all the rest
of the party; but Berenger scarcely seemed to feel the deep plunge
at every step as they almost ploughed their way along for the weary
two miles, before a few green bushes and half-choked trees showed
that they were reaching the confines of the sandy waste. Berenger
had not uttered a word the whole time, and his silence hushed the
others. The ground began to rise, grass was seen still struggling
to grow, and presently a large straggling mass of black and gray
ruins revealed themselves, with the remains of a once well-trodden
road leading to them. But the road led to a gate-way choked by a
fallen jamb and barred door, and the guide led them round the ruins
of the wall to the opening where the breach had been. The sand was
already blowing in, and no doubt veiled much; for the streets were
scarcely traceable through remnants of houses more or less
dilapidated, with shreds of broken or burnt household furniture
within them.
'Ask him for la rue des Trois Fees,' hoarsely whispered Berenger.
The fisherman nodded, but soon seemed at fault; and an old man,
followed by a few children, soon appearing, laden with piece of
fuel, he appealed to him as Father Gillot, and asked whether he
could find the street. The old man seemed at home in the ruins,
and led the way readily. 'Did he know the Widow Laurent's house?'
'Mademoiselle [footnote: This was the title of bourgeoisewives,
for many years, in France.] Laurent! Full well he knew her; a good
pious soul was she, always ready to die for the truth,' he added,
as he read sympathy in the faces round; 'and no doubt she had
witnessed a good confession.'
'Knew he aught of the lady she had lodged?'
'He knew nothing of ladies. Something he had heard of the good
widow having sheltered that shining light, Isaac Gardon, quenched,
no doubt, in the same destruction; but for his part, he had a
daughter in one of the isles out there, who always sent for him if
she suspected danger here on the mainland, and he had only returned
to his poor farm a day or two after Michael-mas.' So saying, he
led them to the threshold of a ruinous building, in the very
centre, as it were, of the desolation, and said, 'That, gentlemen,
is where the poor honest widow kept her little shop.'
Black, burnt, dreary, lay the hospitable abode. The building had
fallen, but the beams of the upper floor had fallen aslant, so as
to shelter a portion of the lower room, where the red-tile
pavement, the hearth with the gray ashes of the harmless home-fire,
some unbroken crocks, a chain, and a sabot, were still visible,
making the contrast of dreariness doubly mournful.
Berenger had stepped over the threshold, with his hat in his hand,
as if the ruin were a sacred place to him, and stood gazing in a
transfixed, deadened way. The captain asked where the remains
were.
'Our people,' said the old man and the fisher, 'laid them by night
in the earth near the church.'
Just then Berenger's gaze fell on something half hidden under the
fallen timbers. He instantly sprang forward, and used all his
strength to drag it out in so headlong a manner that all the rest
hurried to prevent his reckless proceedings from bringing the heavy
beams down on his head. When brought to light, the object proved
to be one of the dark, heavy, wooden cradles used by the French
peasantry, shining with age, but untouched by fire.
'Look in,' Berenger signed to Philip, his own eyes averted, his
mouth set.
The cradle was empty, totally empty, save for a woolen covering, a
little mattress, and a string of small yellow shells threaded.
Berenger held out his hand, grasped the baby-play thing
convulsively, then dropped upon his knees, clasping his hands over
his ashy face, the string of shells still wound among his fingers.
Perhaps he had hitherto hardly realized the existence of his child,
and was solely wrapped up in the thought of his wife; but the
wooden cradle, the homely toy, stirred up fresh depths of feelings;
he saw Eustacie wither tender sweetness as a mother, he beheld the
little likeness of her in the cradle; and oh! that this should have
been the end! Unable to repress a moan of anguish from a bursting
heart, he laid his face against the senseless wood, and kissed it
again and again, then lay motionless against it save for the long-
drawn gasps and sobs that shook his frame. Philip, torn to the
heart, would have almost forcibly drawn him away; but Master Hobbs,
with tears running down his honest cheeks, withheld the boy.
'Don't ye, Master Thistlewood, 'twill do him good. Poor young
gentleman! I know how it was when I came home and found our first
little lad, that we had thought so much on, had been take. But
then he was safe laid in his own churchyard, and his mother was
there to meet me; while your poor brother---Ah! God comfort him!'
'Le pauvre Monsieur!' exclaimed the old peasant, struck at the
sight of his grief, 'was it then his child? And he, no doubt,
lying wounded elsewhere while God's hand was heavy on this place.
Yet he might hear more. They said the priest came down and carried
off the little ones to be bred up in convents.'
'Who?--where?' asked Berenger, raising his head as if catching at a
straw in this drowning of all his hopes.
''Tis true,' added the fisherman. 'It was the holy priest of
Nissard, for he send down to St. Julien for a woman to nurse the
babes.'
'To Nissard, then,' said Berenger, rising.
'It is but a chance,' said the old Huguenot; 'many of the innocents
were with their mothers in yonder church. Better for them to
perish like the babes of Bethlehem than to be bred up in the house
of Baal; but perhaps Monsieur is English, and if so he might yet
obtain the child. Yet he must not hope too much.'
'No, for there was many a little corpse among those we buried,'
said the fisher. 'Will the gentleman see the place?'
'Oh, no!' exclaimed Philip, understanding the actions, and indeed
many of the words; 'this place will kill him.'
'To the grave,' said Berenger, as if he heard nothing.
'See,' added Philip, 'there are better things than graves,' and he
pointed to a young green sucker of a vine, which, stimulated by the
burnt soil, had shot up between the tiles of the floor. 'Look,
there is hope to meet you even here.'
Berenger merely answered by gathering a leaf from the vine and
putting it into his bosom; and Philip, whom only extreme need could
have thus inspired, perceived that he accepted it as the augury of
hope.
Berenger turned to bid the two men bear the cradle with them, and
then followed the old man out into the PLACE, once a pleasant open
paved square, now grass-grown and forlorn. On one side lay the
remains of the church. The Huguenots had been so predominant at La
Sablerie as to have engrossed the building, and it had therefore
shared the general destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a
mere shell, and the once noble spire, the mariner's guiding star,
blown up with gun-cruel that ever desolated the country. Beyond
lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable dreariness. The crossed of
the Catholic dead had been levelled by the fanaticism of the
Huguenots, and though a great dominant stone cross raised on steps
had been re-erected, it stood uneven, tottering and desolate among
nettles, weeds, and briers. There seemed to have been a few deep
trenches dug to receive the bodies of the many victims of the
siege, and only rudely and slightly filled in with loose earth, on
which Philippe treading had nearly sunk in, so much to his horror
that he could hardly endure the long contemplation in which his
brother stood gazing on the dismal scene, as if to bear it away
with him. Did the fair being he had left in a king's palace sleep
her last sleep her last sleep amid the tangled grass, the thistles
and briers that grew so close that it was hardly possible to keep
from stumbling over them, where all memorials of friend or foe were
alike obliterated? Was a resting-place among these nameless graves
the best he could hope for the wife whose eyes he had hoped by this
time would be answering his own--was this her shelter from foe,
from sword, famine, and fire?
A great sea-bird, swooping along with broad wings and wild wailing
cry, completed the weird dismay that had seized on Philip, and
clutching at his brother's cloak, he exclaimed, 'Berry, Berry, let
us be gone, or we shall both be distraught!'
Berenger yielded passively, but when the ruins of the town had been
again crossed, and the sad little party, after amply rewarding the
old man, were about to return to St. Julien, he stood still,
saying, 'Which is the way to Nissard?' and, as the men pointed to
the south, he added, 'Show me the way thither.'
Captain Hobbs now interfered. He knew the position of Nissard,
among dangerous sandbanks, between which a boat could only venture
at the higher tides, and by daylight. To go the six miles thither
at present would make it almost impossible to return to the
THROSTLE that night, and it was absolutely necessary that he at
least should do this. He therefore wished the young gentleman to
return with him on board, sleep there, and be put ashore at Nissard
as soon as it should be possible in the morning. But Berenger shook
his head. He could not rest for a moment till he had ascertained
the fate of Eustacie's child. Action alone could quench the horror
of what he had recognized as her own lot, and the very pursuit of
this one thread of hope seemed needful to him to make it
substantial. He would hear of nothing but walking at once to
Nissard; and Captain Hobbs, finding it impossible to debate the
point with one so dazed and crushed with grief, and learning from
the fishermen that not only was the priest one of the kindest and
most hospitable men living, but that there was a tolerable
caberet not far from the house, selected from the loiterers who
had accompanied them from St. Julien a trustworthy-looking, active
lad as a guide, and agreed with the high tide on the morrow, either
to concert measures for obtaining possession of the lost infant,
or, if all were in vain, to fetch them off. Then he, with the mass
of stragglers from St. Julien, went off direct for the coast, while
the two young brothers, their two attendants, and the fishermen,
turned southwards along the summit of the dreary sandbanks.