that he was making a stretch of complaisance, but having in his mind something about not trampling on a fallen enemy. “I suppose these excise devils have been plaguing you as——as——” “As I used to plague others, you were going to say, sir. Yes: I have had a few messages from the Board—a few gentle messages. They sent me word——” He seemed scarcely able to speak, and Anna interrupted him with “Perhaps, as you are so hoarse, Mr. Durell, you had better leave telling us that till another time.”
“No!” cried he, forcing his voice. “I can tell you, and I will, what their messages were. The first was that my business was to act and not to think; and that, whatever may happen, my part is to be silent and obedient. There’s a pretty message to a free-born man! That came out of what I said at the election where I could not vote; and of my defending it afterwards at your house.”
“O, dear! that is a great pity.”
“Not at all a pity, sir, I don’t repent a syllable I said there. I am only sorry (as sorry as they are), that they did not hear of that election affair before three months were over.—Why?—Because then they could have done worse with me than sending me a reprimand. They could have thrown me into prison for a fine of 500_l._, and declared——But they kept that for their next message. They could then have made a martyr of me, sir; such a system must have martyrs: and I had rather have died in jail, so that a few people would have asked why, than just be carried from my own door to my grave without having my revenge on those devils in power,—without any body supposing any thing but that I died, as other people die, in their beds.”
“But you will not die yet. You are almost a young man. You must not think of dying yet.”
“Only with a hope to live,” interposed Anna, to whom it was painful to hear people told that they must not think of dying.
“Hope to live!” exclaimed Durell, contemptuously. “What should I hope for? The only prospect that could ever have tempted me to make myself one of their vile crew, they have blighted and blasted. They took care I should know, after that election business, that I should never rise any higher,—that the best I had to expect was to be graciously allowed,—in return for promising not to think, but to be silent and obedient,—to go on being a king’s spy and a trader’s tormentor for life,—to keep my wife and children alive with scanty bread soaked in the tears of my degraded and broken manhood. This is what they offered in return for my promising not to think, but to be silent and obedient.”
“They little knew whom they were speaking to, indeed,” observed Anna.
“Did not they know they were speaking to a man? There are some men that would sooner watch an ant-hill than a hidden distillery, and that think of a lark’s nest when they wake in the morning, and are apt to be looking out after the stars when they should be asleep: and there are others that are never so happy as when they are smelling out soap, and sending a panic before them. The rulers have nothing to do with these men’s different tastes, as long as the poet and the meddler both do their work. But both these, and all between them, are men: and it is a foul crime to strip them of their sight and their strength,—of their reason and their will: and if it be true that the service they are on requires such outrage, it only follows that the service itself is foul.
If it would but please God to restore me my strength for a little while, I would find a way yet to pull down their despotism upon their own heads.”
He made an effort to rise, but the ground seemed unsteady beneath his feet, and he sank down again.
“They have struck me a deeper blow still,” said he, “or you would not see me as I am now. They have believed in my dishonour, on the information of a scoundrel. They believe that you have bribed me.”
“That was the reason why my husband could not think of seeing you before: the only reason,” Mrs. Durell was in haste to explain. “But it is over now. They have turned him off, on what Mr. Studley said; and now they want him to be thankful that he is not fined 500_l._ Thank God we have done with them, I say. We shall be able——” “We have not done with them. We shall not be able,” cried Durell. “The hounds can hunt me out of my rest wherever I may choose to seek it. They boast that they can. They give me notice that if ever I make an attempt to serve my country, they shall bring out their evidence to prove me incapable of ever holding any office or place of trust under the king.”
“But if they cannot do it, Mr. Durell?” suggested Anna.
“They can. Ay: you look surprised: but they can. I never forgot my honour. I never took a bribe; for you know that your Jersey pie and ale were no bribe. But they can prove against me some things which they can no more pardon than I can pardon certain of their practices. If a base wretch joins a better man in evading the law, and then turns traitor, he is excused and rewarded: but if a man with a heart in his bosom gives a friendly warning to the careless, or passes over the first offence of the widow that toils for her little ones, he is under ban, and can never again serve his king. Such things they may prove against me.”
“I doubt whether you may not still serve the king better than you have done yet,” observed Anna. “I cannot call it doing the king any service to make the people hate their duty to him, and to teach them to defraud him. People should love their king very strongly, for instance, to wish to yield him their cheerful duty through all that my father has undergone in paying his taxes. If you do not collect the king’s money any more, there are other ways of doing him service, which must be open to such a man as you are. Whatever makes his kingdom a more honourable and a happier place; whatever makes his subjects a better or more contented people, is, in my mind, a true and faithful service of the king.”
“That is what I have been saying,” observed Mrs. Durell.
“And what was my answer?” said her husband: “that not all that the wisest and the most true-hearted of the people can do to promote science, and public and private morality, can make any stand against what these——” “Pray do not call them names,” entreated Anna. “They are men,—men said to be of honour and principle, whose lot it is to administer a bad system which they did not make. Do not let us blame them till we see that they take no pains to alter that which they cannot approve.”
“Well: call them men or devils, or what you will. They administer a system which is enough of itself to keep us back in knowledge and art till all the world besides has passed us, and to do worse for our morals than all our clergy can cure. I can prove it. As for knowledge, only look at the paper tax, keeping books and newspapers out of the reach of those who want them most, and stinting the class above them of their fair share of that which God has given every man as free a right to as to the air of heaven. As for art,—when was there a nobler triumph of it than when man fixed a yellow star out above the sea, to gleam on the souls of thousands of tempest-tost wretches, like the gospel they trusted in, and to give the wanderer his first welcome home?”
“Indeed we can say that,” said Anna. “Such a light through the fog was the best sight we saw in all the sea, in coming; and I never shut my eyes to sleep now but I could fancy I see that light, hoping to pass under it before long.”
“Well: there might now be a light far better than that, or any light that yet hangs above the sea; a light that would shine through the thickest fog, like a morsel of the copper sun that rises on an October morning,—a light that would save thousands of poor wretches that must now go down into the deeps with the moans of their orphaned little ones in their ears; and this light we may not use.”
“Because of the excise?”
“For no other reason. Glasses of a new construction would be required for the light-houses: and this new construction is not such as is set down in the excise laws. No glass-maker dares venture it, and the only hope is that we may get some foreign nation to do it for us.”
Anna thought it was a poor way of serving the king to drown his subjects, and employ foreigners to work upon discoveries made at home,— and all under pretence of taking care of the money of the state.
“This is only one instance out of many,” Durell declared. “As for what I said about morality, I know of cheats enough to fill a jest book.”
“A jest-book!” said his wife, in a tone of remonstrance.
“Nay, my dear, it is their fault, not mine, if, when they have sharpened wits to cheat, the witty cheats are laughed at as good jokes. Last year, a very good joke was spoiled. The wits who made it laughed in their sleeves as long as it went on; and when it came out, every body else laughed, the excise and all, though the crime is really as great as robbing the widow of her mite, since the widow’s mite must go to make up for the fraud. There is no duty on soap in Ireland; and some cunning Englishmen, who had made soap without paying the duty, packed it up for Ireland, got the drawback of 28_l._ a ton, just as if they had paid the duty, and sent it off, smuggled it back again, packed it afresh, got the drawback again, and sent it off, and again smuggled it back; and so on, four times over. Now, for the idea of this cheat, for the lies that were told, for the false oaths that were taken in carrying it on, and for the making a sordid crime into a joke, the excise is answerable. And this is what the excise does for morality.”
“And this is the way the money of the people is managed,” observed Le Brocq; “wrenched from the honest working man with one hand, that it may be given away to the fraudulent great trader with the other!”
Mrs. Durell had been well pleased at the turn the conversation had taken, seeing that, while her husband’s attention was occupied with matters of detail, he resumed more and more of his usual countenance, voice and manner. There was less fierceness in his eye, less effort in his speech, and he sat almost upright. But Le Brocq spoiled all.
“I cannot but wonder at you, Durell, especially as you are a Jerseyman, that you, knowing the system so well, should have left it to the gentlemen to turn you out.”
“Wonder at me!” said Durell, after a pause, during which he could not speak. “Wonder at me! Why don’t you curse me and loathe me for being an abject wretch, for the sake of my children’s bread? I thank God for taking their bread from them before my eyes, if it teaches them to despise their father and their father’s business.”
“O, husband!” cried Mrs. Durell.
“I mean what I say,” he continued, with a forced calmness of voice and manner. “I am going to leave them—to leave them in your charge; and I command you to bring them up in horror of everything that is dishonest, and vile, and cruel; and if you bring them up to abhor everything that is dishonest, and vile, and cruel, you must bring them up either to forget their father and his employments, or to despise him for being so employed. I give you your choice, and only pray God that I may hide myself in my grave before either comes to pass.”
“Don’t listen to him. Don’t believe him,” cried the wife, turning first to Le Brocq, and then to Anna. “You see he is not himself; you see he is talking like——” “Like a man who is waking from a morning dream,” said her husband, whose excited senses caught looks and words which were not intended for him.
“I am not drunk, Le Brocq, though I have no right to complain if you fancy me so; and I am not mad.”
“But angry,—very angry,” Anna ventured to interpose.
“Well; if I have been angry, it has nothing to do with what I am going to say, which is about you and yours, Le Brocq, with whom I have no cause to be angry. I am like a man waking from a dream; and I see many things that I wish it had pleased God that I should see long ago.”
“You cannot say you have no cause to be angry with us,” cried Le Brocq, moved by a sudden impulse of sensibility; “that is, with me. Anna has always been your friend; and if my wife has not, it is only because she has copied me. I have doubted you all along till now; and I am very sorry for it.”
“Doubted my honour?” asked Durell, bitterly.
“Doubted your being the friend you professed yourself. I thought that you might, with the power of your office, have prevented some of the misfortunes that have befallen us. But now I find——” “Now you find that I have been a slave, obliged to stand by, and see those punished that I would fain have saved. Now you find that an exciseman must choose his friends by their trades, if there be any trades that the curse of his employment does not light upon. We used to think that God has shown how friendships should arise,—shown it by the meeting of the eyes that glance sympathy; and the grasp of the hands when men find that they had the same birth-place. But the power that has stepped in between us has set aside God’s arrangements altogether. You and I gathered nuts, as children, in the same deep lanes, and played about the same poquelaye; but as soon as I would have grasped hands upon this, what happened? You believed it the grasp of a traitor, and our enemies said we were giving and taking a bribe; and between you both, I am sunk to perdition, body and soul.”
“But that is all over now. Nobody will think any more——” “It will never be over. The stain will be as lasting as the record of my name in the creation. When people shall see me carried to my grave, a few days hence, they will remember how they saw me last carried through the streets,—a brute, lower than the lowest of all other brutes. When they meet my wife in her weeds, they will look into her face to see if there is not joy hidden under it, because her torment of a husband is gone.”
“Do stop him. I cannot bear it,” said Mrs. Durell, putting her hands before her face.
“You will bear it very well, my dear. It is true, you will have no bread to give your children; and when you beg it, people will stop to consider whether they ought to help the children of the dissolute exciseman; but all this will not set against the relief of having got rid of the wretch himself. Ah! you don’t think so now, because you pity me, as you would pity a sickly child;—you pity me for sitting drooping here, with a perishing carcase and a worn-out spirit. But I don’t want your pity. I He rose from his chair, and took a few strides towards his wife, evidently in a state of delirium. The urgency of the occasion seemed to inspire Le Brocq with the very sentiment which suited the moment.
“I say, Mr. Durell,” said he, “no man likes being made a child of; and I like it no better than other men; so I am going back,——come, you had better sit down again; take my arm;——I am going back to Jersey. Have you any messages for your old friends there?”
“To Jersey: ay; you are right there, Le Brocq. That was what I was going to say. Don’t stay here, where there is more misery caused by mere paying taxes than there is in Jersey by all God’s dark providences together. Go and tell them, whatever they do,” he continued, settling himself in his chair again,——“tell them, whatever they do, not to dare, for the sake of raising money for the state, to crush the simple and high-minded, and exalt the mean and crafty——” “Ay; Studley! How that fellow is flourishing at the expense of us all!”
cried Le Brocq.
Anna marked the flashing of Durell’s eyes at the name, and interposed.
“We shall soon be settled in our farm again, Mr. Durell; and perhaps you will be well enough to come and see us by the time we begin shaking the trees in the orchard.”
“Shaking the trees in the orchard,” repeated Durell slowly, as if the words revived some intensely pleasurable recollections.
“Your old friends were very sorry when you went away, and they will be heartily glad to hear you are coming back. You will come and see us, Mr.
Durell.”
“Come, my dear! ay; that I will,—in body or in spirit. I will be at your apple-cropping. I will pelt you with apples; and if you cannot see where they come from, remember who promised you this. I will echo you when you go to call home your cows. I will rustle in the ivy when you pass the Holy Oak;—(that old oak is the first place I shall go to.) I will walk round and round you as you sit on the poquelaye; and if you feel a sudden breath of air upon your face, remember who it was that said he would haunt you. God will hear my prayer, and let me see Jersey again, whether I die first or not.—Jack! Come here, Jack!”
His feeble voice could not make itself heard further than half across the room; but Jack came in from the kitchen, in answer to Le Brocq’s effectual call. His father desired him to bring down the flute from the book-shelves; and his manner of obeying,—as if he was by no means sure whether he had to do with his father or with a ghost,—did not help to recover Anna from the chilly fit into which she had been thrown by Durell’s promises. She did not think she could ever go out to call home the cows, or pass the Holy Oak or the poquelaye. She had never feared Durell till this night; but he was strangely altered; and she thought that the impression of this night would be stronger than that of all her previous acquaintance with him.
“Stand here, boy; don’t go away,” said Durell to Jack, who was most unwillingly pinned between his father’s knees to hear the flute. Durell began an air which is sung by the common people in Jersey every day of the year; but his breath failed him directly; and he allowed the instrument to be taken from him.
“Then I may go,” said Jack, gently struggling to escape.
“Yes, my dear,” said his mother. “Your father is tired now; he has done enough for this evening.”
“No, no,” said Durell. “I must tell him what he is to see at home.
I must tell him what little boys do in Jersey. When I was your age, Jack——” “To-morrow, love,” said his wife. “You can tell him to-morrow.”
“I should like to hear what boys do in Jersey,” declared Jack, his confidence returning.
“And so you shall, my boy. Sit still, Le Brocq. I shall want you to help me. When I was your age. Jack——” And then he proceeded to tell how in his childhood he went out through thickets of the blue hydrangea to the dells where he spent the whole day in birds’ nesting; and of the hatfull of wild flowers that he treated himself with before he began to climb the trees whose ivy was his ladder. Not two minutes after he had soothed himself into a state of calmness by these recollections, he began to speak indistinctly, and to appear drowsy. Jack was admonished by gesture not to ask for any thing over again; not to be impatient for what was to come next. This was a hard admonition; and when his father sank back asleep, and he was gently withdrawn from between the knees which no longer held him, the poor boy was quietly weeping at having to wait for the rest of the story. Not even his mother suspected how long he would have to wait.
The Le Brocqs stole away. Jack was put quietly out of the room. Mrs.
Durell hung a shade upon the lamp, fed the fire with the least possible noise, and sat down with her work opposite her husband, trusting that he was dreaming of the meads and coves of his native island, and that he would thus sleep on till morning. Long before morning, she had discovered that he would wake no more. The Le Brocqs were called up early by Stephen to be told that they had heard the very last words of him who had died of a broken heart.
It was a great blessing that his last words were words of peace. There was no need for Anna to implore little Jack to treasure up what his father was saying when he fell asleep. When Jack was grown up into a man, it was still a matter of mourning to him that he had not heard the whole of what his father had to tell about birds’ nesting in the dells of Jersey.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAND OF SIGNALS.
The Le Brocqs were more anxious than ever to leave London when they had seen their friendly countryman laid in the ground. In order to repay himself as far as he could for the troubles he had incurred in business, Le Brocq determined to carry with him to Jersey as much as he could convey of his manufactured article. The cider-makers of the islands would be very glad of his bottles, he knew, if he could sell them cheap enough; and he believed he could sell them cheap, and yet secure a profit by obtaining the drawback on exportation allowed by law. After all the experience he had had of the duty-paying in England, it still did not occur to him that there might be difficulty in recovering the duty which the law professed to restore. Nothing can be more evident than that when a tax is imposed on the consumption of any article, and is advanced by the maker of the article, the maker should be repaid what he has advanced when the article goes to be consumed by the people of another empire, or by those in some other part of the same empire who may be particularly exempted from the payment of the duty. Le Brocq imagined that all he should have to do would be to show how much duty he had paid upon the ware he wished to export, and to receive the sum back again. He even speculated on whether the government would allow him interest on the money he had advanced. He considered it his due; but he would not delay his departure on account of any disagreement of this kind. He would not put off till another day the conclusion of a business which he supposed might be transacted in ten minutes. He little thought that the keenest and most practised exporter would laugh as much at the idea of finishing the affair in a few minutes as at that of receiving interest for the duty advanced. It might be that because he was discovered to be a novice, he was more strictly dealt with than those who are acquainted with the regulations of the excise and customs; but he found himself much mistaken in his calculations. It is not for the benefit of the king’s interests, or for the credit of his service, that practised persons are comparatively little watched, while novices are well nigh persecuted under the perplexing system of the excise and customs. It is unjust and injurious, but perfectly natural;—natural, because no human patience, industry, and vigilance can be expected to be always equal to the disgusting labour of spying and detecting. It is natural that those who have been made fully aware of the dangers they incur by fraud should be left under the influence of fear to swear truly and pay duly, though unexamined. Honour is a word out of use upon these occasions; or is employed merely as a word. Fear is the influence to which his majesty’s officers trust, when they leave a practised trader to declare his own claims and responsibilities, and show how he wishes his business to be managed. Fear is the influence they invoke when they impress the inexperienced with awe, or worry him out of his temper, with a view to saving themselves future trouble. Fear is the influence above all unfavourable to the interests of a king, and the security of a government; and that which should be used, not for the levying of its support, but only for the deterring of its subjects from crime, against which all other precautions had previously been taken.
The officers succeeded in inspiring the Jerseyman with fear, insomuch that he presently doubted whether he could at last get away without leaving his bottles behind. While others, happier than he, paid down small sums with one hand, and received larger with the other, after gabbling over oaths which none but the initiated could understand, and witnessing certain entries made on their own declaration, Le Brocq had a much longer ceremony to go through. He had to swear that the bottles he wished to export were none of them under the weight of three ounces; that he had given due notice to the officer of excise of his intention to ship his wares; that the contents of the package corresponded with the document signed by the excise officer; that they were all marked with an E X; that none were broken; that none had been used; that no prohibited article was in the package; that the wares were packed according to law, without vacant spaces or other improprieties; that they were believed to be entirely of English manufacture, and that they had paid duty; and so on. He was next told, as a friendly warning, that if the package was not properly prepared for sealing, (_i. e._ with a hollow scooped out for the purpose,) the goods would be forfeited: if any brand or mark was erased, the goods would be forfeited, and the offender would be fined 200_l._: if the package was not on board within twelve hours from the time of branding or sealing, it would be forfeited; and so on. Moreover, the searcher had power to open and examine the package; and if it was found that the exporter was not correct in every tittle of what he had sworn, he would be indicted for perjury. Le Brocq had as much horror of a false oath as any man; but he now felt how easily a timid or a hasty man might be tempted into one, for the sake of escaping as soon and as easily as possible from the inquisition of the excise. He felt the strength of the temptation to a trader to swear to the legal preparation of a box, the packing of which he had not superintended.
In the next place, he found that, so far from obtaining interest upon the duty he had advanced, he must be at some expense to recover the drawback. The debenture, or certificate of the customs officer that he would be entitled to the drawback, is on a ten-shilling stamp; and he who would recover the amount of one tax could do it only by paying another. To recover an excise tax, he must pay a stamp tax. The dismay of the Jerseyman, thus haunted by taxes to the last, was highly amusing to a fellow-sufferer who stood by, and who proclaimed his own worse fate. He was receiving back the duty upon four packages of goods, and each debenture cost him 11_s._ 6_d._; making 2_l._ 7_s._ the cost of recovering 10_l._ But this was not the last discovery that Le Brocq had to make.
It appeared finally that, as the goods were intended for the Channel islands, the drawback could not be allowed till a certificate of the landing of the goods could be produced, signed by the collector and comptroller of the customs on the island where the ware was landed. Le Brocq was not the less disconcerted by this news for its being made evident to him that such an arrangement is necessary under a system of taxation by excise and customs. It was clear, as he acknowledged, that without such a precaution, the drawback might be obtained upon goods which were not really destined for the Channel islands: but the arrangement did not the less interfere with his private convenience.
What was to be done now? He had no inclination to leave the goods, or to forego the drawback; and there was no one here to whom he could commit his affairs. After a long consultation at home, it was agreed that Le Brocq should, after all, stay till cousin Anthony, or instructions from him, should arrive; and that Mrs. Le Brocq and Anna should proceed to the islands, conducting and conducted by Stephen. Stephen was not exactly the kind of escort that the family would have thought of accepting, some time before: but circumstances were now changed. He could guide them to Aaron: he could secure for them, by ways and means of his own, a remarkably cheap passage. He was now adrift, there being no longer a home for him at Mrs. Durell’s; and he promised, for his own sake as well as that of his companions, to make the most, instead of the least, of such sight as he had left. As he could not expect to meet with another Durell to house and cherish him, it was his interest to find his way back to his old comrades, and see what they could do for him. While offering his parting thanks and blessing to Mrs. Durell, he intimated to her that, though he could not see to write, she should hear from him in a way which he hoped would be acceptable;—an intimation which she received with about the same degree of belief that she had been accustomed to give to the protestations of others of her husband’s protégés.
Mild were the airs, and cloudless was the sky when the vessel which conveyed the Le Brocqs and their escort drew near the Swinge of Alderney, and when the Channel islands rose to view, one after another, from the sunny sea. The stupendous wall of rock which seems to forbid the stranger to dream of exploring Alderney, rose on the left; the little russet island of Berhou on the right; and, beyond it, the white towers of the three Casket lighthouses, each on its rock, and all gleaming in the sunset, rose upon Anna’s heart as well as upon her eye.
To her surprise, she met with sympathy.
“’Tis not often,” said Stephen, “that I care about storm or calm. Wind and weather may take their own course for me. But I had a choice for this evening. I wished for a wind that would bring us here before sunset, and for a sky that would let the sun shine.”
“You see those white towers,” said Anna, who perceived that he twinkled and strained his eyes in that direction.
“See them! yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Le Brocq. “Those must be stone blind that do not get dazzled with all that glare. I like Jersey, with the green ivy hanging from the rock over the sea. I want to be at Jersey, with my Louise.”
“All in good time, ma’am,” said Stephen. “We must land somewhere else first, and find your Aaron. How like ghosts they stand!” he continued, still looking towards the Caskets. “And one taller than the rest.”
“You see that too,” said Anna. “Then I am sure you must see Berhou. We are coming nearer every moment. Hark to the splashing in the Swinge!”
“Ay, ay; I’ll listen with the best,” said Stephen. “And I can see something in the Swinge, though the dark island is all one with the sea to me.”
“Which dark island? And what do you see in the Swinge?”
“Berhou has nothing to mark it to my eye. I can just trace out Alderney against the sky; but the something white that is leaping and gleaming there, I take to be the foam of the waters in the Swinge. Ah! here we go!”
While the vessel pitched and rolled, and took her zigzag course, as if spontaneously, between the black points of rock which showed themselves above the white billows, and seemed to tell of a hundred dangers as formidable as themselves, Anna was sorry for him who, either physically or intellectually blind, could see nothing in Berhou. Neither man nor child was visible; no human habitation; no boat upon the strip of beach which the rocks and the sea spared between them; but the grey gull sat, spreading its wings for flight, and the stormy petrel, rarely met within sight of land, were here perceived to lose the mystery of their existence. While Anna observed them going forth and returning, and hovering over the fissures of the rock in which they make their homes, she found that Mother Carey’s chickens are probably hatched from the egg, like other birds, and not wafted from the moon, or floated from the sea depths,—the especial favourites of some unseen power. The slopes of down which showed themselves in the partings of the rocks, looked green in contrast with whatever surrounded them; though no hand of man brightened their verdure, and they were not even trodden by any foot but those of the wild animals who had the region to themselves. While she was thus gazing, and her mother would look at nothing because it was not Jersey, the master and one or two of his crew seemed to be watching the coast of the other island in the intervals of their extreme care to obviate the perils of the passage through the strait. At this moment, a breath of air brought the faint sound of chiming bells from Alderney.
Stephen instantly turned to listen, and waited patiently till it came again, and Anna was sure that it was wafted from a church-steeple, and not from any region of fancy.
“Master,” said Stephen, “you will not be able to land us in Alderney The master was just going to advise the party to proceed to Guernsey.
The state of the tide was such that he could not engage to set any one on shore in Alderney. The party had better go on to Guernsey.
“The vraicking season begins to-morrow, master. You have no mind to lose all your passengers that might like to stay and see the vraicking. Well; that is fair enough. But we cannot go on to Guernsey, having no call there. You may set us ashore on Berhou.”
The master supposed he meant some other place. The honey-bees and the rabbits might make out a good night’s rest in Berhou, but there were no lodgings for Christians. Stephen knew better; and knew, moreover, that the master might feel well enough pleased at being spared performing his promise as to Alderney, to land the party, without objection, in a more practicable place. This was true. The master had not the least objection to their supping with the rabbits, and sleeping among the sea-fowl, if they chose. Moreover, if they found themselves starving by the time he came back that way, he would toss them some biscuit, if they would only hoist a flag of distress. Stephen did not care a whit for the master’s mockery of his plans, or for Mrs. Le Brocq’s complaints at being landed any where so far from her Louise. He showed so much respect to Anna’s doubtful looks and words as to assure her that he knew what he was about, and that no delay would arise from his choice of an uninhabited island for a temporary resting place. Anna had no choice but to trust him; but a feeling of forlornness came over her when, having landed the old lady, and seated her on the sands to recover her breath and dry her tears, she and Stephen stood to see the vessel recede in the strait, and at length enter the open sea beyond, leaving them out of reach of human voice and help.
“Could that bell be heard here from Alderney if the sea was quiet?” she asked.
“I dare say it might; but this sea is never quiet,” he replied. “Day and night, summer and winter, it plunges and boils as you see. You are thinking that the sound of a church-bell would be cheering in this solitude; but yonder bell keeps its music for the folks on its own island; and a merry set they will be to-night on the south side, watching the tide going down towards morning, that they may begin the vraicking.”
“And what are we to do next?” asked Anna, with a touch of the doleful in her voice which seemed to amuse Stephen.
“Catch Mother Carey’s chickens, and run after rabbits, to be sure. You know there is nothing else to live upon here. We shall have a merry life of it, shall not we?”
“I wish you would answer me, Stephen. My mother cannot bear joking. What are we to do next?”
“You must watch for the lighting of the Caskets, and eat a biscuit in the meantime.”
It was a comfort that some biscuits were secured; for Mrs. Le Brocq was never wholly miserable while eating, whatever she might be before and after. The sun was fast sinking behind the Caskets, so that it could not be long before their now dark towers would be crowned with a yellow gleam, and more of Stephen’s little plot would be unravelled. Anna suggested that if they had to go any where to look for a boat or a lodging, it would be better to move before twilight came on. She