Frenchman's Creek

"Possibly you have. But to make the treatise complete you must add a final word on compatibility. It does happen, you know, from time to time, that a man finds a woman who is the answer to all his more searching dreams. And the two have understanding of each other, from the lightest moment to the darkest mood."

"But it does not happen very often?"

"No, not very often."

"Then my treatise will have to remain incomplete."

"Which will be unfortunate for your readers, but even more unfortunate for yourself."

"Ah, but instead of a word on - compatibility, as you phrase it, I could write a page or two on motherhood. I am an excellent mother."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Ask William. He knows all about it."

"If you are so excellent a mother what are you doing on the deck of La Mouette with your legs tucked up under you and your hair blowing about your face, discussing the intimacies of marriage with a pirate?"

This time it was Dona who laughed, and putting her hands to her hair she tried to arrange the disordered ringlets, tying them behind her ears with a ribbon from her bodice.

"Do you know what Lady St. Columb is doing now?" she asked.

"I should love to know."

"She is lying in bed with a feverish headache and a chill on the stomach, and she will receive no one in her room except William, her faithful servant, who now and again brings her grapes to soothe her fever."

"I am sorry for her ladyship, especially if she browses on incompatibility as she lies there."

"She does no such thing, she is far too level-headed."

"If Lady St. Columb is level-headed why did she masquerade as a highwayman in London, and dress herself in breeches?"

"Because she was angry."

"Why was she angry?"

"Because she had not made a success of her life."

"And finding she had not made a success, she tried to escape?"

"Yes."

"And if Lady St. Columb tosses on a bed of fever now, regretting the past, who is this woman sitting on the deck beside me?"

"She is a cabin-boy, the most insignificant member of your crew."

"The cabin-boy has a monstrous appetite, he has eaten up all the cheese, and three-quarters of the loaf."

"I am sorry. I thought you had finished."

"So I have."

He smiled at her, and she looked away, lest he should read her eyes and think her wanton, which she knew herself to be, and did not care. Then, emptying his pipe on the deck, he said: "Would you like to sail the ship?"

She looked at him once again, her eyes dancing.

"May I? Will she not sink?"

He laughed, and rose to his feet, pulling her up beside him, and they went together to the great wheel, where he said a word to the helmsman.

"What do I do?" asked Dona.

"You hold the spokes in your two hands - thus. You keep the ship steady on her course - thus. Do not let her fall away too much, or you will catch the big foresail aback. Do you feel the wind on the back of your head?"

"Yes."

"Keep it there then, and do not let it come forward of your right cheek."

Dona stood by the wheel, with the spokes in her hands, and after a moment she felt the lifting of the ship, she sensed the movement of the lively hull, and the surge of the vessel as she swept forward over the long seas. The wind whistled in the rigging and the spars, and there was a sound of humming, too, in the narrow triangular sails above her head, while the great square foresail pulled and strained upon its ropes like a live thing.

Down in the waist of the ship the men had perceived the change of helmsman, and nudging one another, and pointing, they laughed up at her, calling to one another in the Breton patois she could not understand, while their captain stood beside her, his hands deep in the pockets of his long coat, his lips framed in a whistle, his eyes searching the seas ahead.

"So there is one thing," he said at last, "that my cabin-boy can do by instinct."

"What is it?" she asked, her hair blowing over her face.

"He can sail a ship."

And laughing, he walked away, leaving her alone with La Mouette.

For an hour Dona stood her trick at the wheel, as happy, she thought to herself, as James would be with a new toy, and finally, her arms tiring, she looked over her shoulders to the helmsman she had relieved, who stood by the wheel watching her with a grin on his face, and coming forward he took the wheel from her again, and she went below to the master's cabin and lay down upon his bunk and slept.

Once, opening an eye, she saw him come in and lean over the charts on the table, jotting down calculations on a piece of paper, and then she must have fallen asleep again for when she woke the cabin was empty, and rising and stretching herself she went on deck, aware, with a certain sense of shame, that she was hungry again.

It was seven then, and the ship was drawing near the coast with the Frenchman himself at the wheel. She said nothing, but went and stood by him, watching the blur of the coast on the horizon.