Frenchman's Creek

"We will get to the creek first and then I will tell you," he said.

He reached down for the plan, and folded it up, throwing it back in the locker, and she saw he was smiling to himself in his secret way.

"How long will it take you to change your clothes?" he asked.

"Five minutes or longer," she said.

"I will leave you then. Come up on deck when you are ready. You will want something to tie up those ringlets." He opened a locker drawer, and ruffling there a moment, drew out the crimson sash he had worn round his waist the night he had supped with her at Navron. "Lady St. Columb becomes a highwayman and a mountebank for the second time in her life," he said, "but this time there won't be any old lady for you to frighten."

Then he went out of the cabin, shutting the door behind him. When she joined him, some ten minutes later, he was standing by the ladder that had been thrown over the ship's side. The first party had already gone ashore, while the rest were now assembled in the boat below. She went towards him a little nervously, feeling small and rather lost in Pierre Blanc's breeches, while his shoes cut her heels, a secret she must keep to herself. He ran his eye over her and then nodded briefly. "You will do," he said, "but you would not pass in moonlight," and she laughed up at him, and climbed down into the boat with the rest of the men. Pierre Blanc himself was crouching in the bows of the boat like a monkey, and when he saw her he closed one eye, and put one hand over his heart. There was a ripple of laughter in the boat, and one and all they smiled at her with a mingled admiration and familiarity that could not offend, and she smiled back at them, leaning back in the stern athwart and clasping her knees with a lovely freedom, no longer hampered by petticoats and ribbons.

The captain of La Mouette descended last, and he took his seat beside her, holding the tiller, and the men bent to their oars and the boat sped across the little bay to the shingle beach beyond. Dona trailed her hand a moment in the water, which was warm, with a velvet softness about it, the phosphorescence gleaming like a shower of stars, and she thought, smiling to herself in the darkness, that at last she was playing the part of a boy, which as a child she had so often longed to be, watching her brothers ride off with her father, and she gazing after them with resentful eyes, a doll thrown aside on the floor in disgust. The bows of the boat touched the shingle, and the first group of men, waiting there on the beach, laid their hands on either side of the gunwale and pulled the boat out of the wash. They had disturbed the gulls again, and two or three pairs rose with a wailing cry, and a flapping of wings.

Dona felt the shingle crunch under her heavy shoes, and she could smell the turf on the cliffs above. Then the men turned to the narrow path that skirted the cliff face like a snake, and they began to climb. Dona set her teeth, for the climb would be a hard one in these shoes that did not fit, and then she saw the Frenchman beside her, and he took her hand, and they climbed the cliff together, she holding onto him for all the world like a small boy clasping his parent. Once they paused for breath, and looking back over her shoulder, she could see the dim outline of La Mouette anchored in the bay, and the sound of muffled oars as the boat that had put them ashore crept back across the water. The gulls had settled again, and now there was no sound but the small scraping noises of the men's feet as they climbed the path ahead, and away below the wash of the sea as it broke upon the shore.

"Can you go on again now?" the Frenchman said, and she nodded, and his grasp on her hand tightened; so she felt little strain on her back or her shoulders, and she thought to herself, happily, brazenly, that this was the first time he had touched her, and the strength of his hand was good to feel. When the cliff was scaled there was still much climbing to be done, for the going was rough, and the young bracken already knee-high, and he continued to lead her after him, while his men spread themselves fan-wise across country, so that she could no longer count their numbers. He had studied his map carefully, of course, and they, too, she supposed, for there was no faltering in their steps or his, and no pause to reconnoitre, and all the while her clumsy shoes rubbed the sides of her feet, and she knew there was a blister on her right heel the size of a gold piece.