Frenchman's Creek

He brought her a plate of chicken, looking her up and down as he did so. "We can do better for you than that," he said, "you forget the Merry Fortune had been to the Indies," and going outside for a moment he stooped to a large wooden box that stood beside the companion-way, and lifting the top he brought out a gaily-coloured shawl, all scarlet and gold, with a silken fringe. "Perhaps Godolphin had this in mind for his wife," he said. "There are plenty more down in the hold if you want them."

He sat down at the table, tearing off a drumstick from the chicken, and eating it in his hand. She drank her wine, watching him over the rim of the glass.

"We might have been hanging from that tree in Godolphin's park," she said.

"We would have been, but for that slant of wind from the west," he answered.

"And what are we going to do now?"

"I never make plans on a Sunday," he told her.

She went on eating her chicken, seizing the wing in her hands as he was doing, and from the bows of the ship came the sound of Pierre Blanc's lute, and the men's voices singing softly.

"Do you always have the devil's own luck, Frenchman?" she said.

"Always," he answered, throwing his drumstick out of the port-hole, and taking the fellow.

The sun streamed in upon the table, while the lazy sea lapped against the side of the ship, and they went on eating, each aware of the other, and the hours that stretched before them.

"Rashleigh makes his seamen comfortable," said the Frenchman presently, looking about him, "perhaps that was why they were all asleep when we climbed on board."

"How many were there then?"

"Half-a-dozen, that is all."

"And what did you do with them?"

"Oh, we bound them back to back and gagged them, and cast them adrift in a boat. They were picked up by Rashleigh himself I dare say."

"Will the sea be rough again?"

"No, that is all finished."

She leant back on her pillow, watching the pattern that the sun made on the bulkhead.

"I am glad I had it, the danger and the excitement," she said, "but I am glad it is over too. I do not want to do it again, not that waiting outside Rashleigh's house, and hiding on the quay, and running across the hills to the cove until I thought my heart would burst."

"You did not do too badly, for a cabin-boy," he said.

He looked across at her, and then away again, and she began to plait the silk fringe of the shawl he had given her. Pierre Blanc was still playing his lute, playing the little rippling song she had heard when she saw La Mouette for me first time anchored in the creek below Navron.

"How long shall we stay in the Merry Fortune?" she said.

"Why, do you want to go home?" he asked.

"No - no, I just wondered," she said.

He got up from the table, and crossing to the porthole looked out at La Mouette where she lay almost becalmed some two miles distant.

"That's the way of it at sea," he said, "always too much wind or too little. We'd be at the French coast by now with a capful of breeze. Perhaps we shall get it, tonight."

He stood there with his hands deep in his breeches pockets, his lips framing the song that Pierre Blanc was playing on the lute.

"What will you do when the wind does come?" she asked.

"Sail within sight of land, and then leave a handful of men to take the Merry Fortune into port. As for ourselves, we shall return on board La Mouette."

She went on playing with the tassel of the shawl.

"And then where do we go?" she said.

"Back to Helford of course. Do you not want to see your children?"

She did not answer. She was watching the back of his head, and the set of his shoulders.

"Perhaps the night-jar is still calling in the creek at midnight," he said. "We could go and find him, and the heron too. I never finished the drawing of the heron, did I?"

"I do not know."

"There are many fish too in the river waiting to be caught," he said.

Pierre Blanc's song dwindled and died, and there was no sound but the lapping of water against the side of the ship.

The Merry Fortune's bell struck the half-hour, and this was echoed by La Mouette, away in the distance. The sun blazed down upon the placid sea. Everything was peaceful. Everything was still.

He turned away then from the port-hole, and came and sat down on the bunk beside her, still whistling the song under his breath.

"This is the best moment for a pirate," he said. "The planning is over and done with, and the game a success. Looking back on it one can remember only the good moments, and the bad are put aside until next time. And so, as the wind will not blow before nightfall, we may do as we please."

Dona listened to the lapping of the sea against the hull.

"We might swim," she said, "in the cool of the evening. Before the sun goes down."

"We might," he said.

There was silence between them, and she went on watching the reflection of the sun above her head. "I cannot get up until my clothes are dry," she said.

"No, I know."

"Will they be very long, out there, in the sun?"