Frenchman's Creek

The creek itself would seem still and silent after the boisterous sun and the lifting sea, and the trees, crowding by the water's edge, would be kindly and gentle. The night-jar would call as he had said, and the fishes plop suddenly in the water, and all the scents and sounds of midsummer would come to them, as they walked in the twilight under the trees, amongst the young green bracken and the moss.

"Shall we build a fire again, and cook supper, in the creek?" he said to her, reading her thoughts. "Yes," she said, "on the quay there, like we did before," and leaning against him, watching the thin line of the coast becoming harder and more distinct, she thought of the other supper they had cooked together, and of the little shyness and restraint between them then that could never come again, for love was a thing of such simplicity once it was shared, and admitted, and done, with all the joy intensified and all the fever gone.

So La Mouette stole in once more towards the land, as she had done that first evening that seemed so long ago now, when Dona had stood on the cliffs and watched her, premonition already in her heart. The sun went down, and the gulls came out to greet them, and the rising tide and the little evening wind brought the ship gently and in silence up the channel of the estuary. Even in the few days they had been absent a depth of colour had come to the trees that had not been before, and there was a richness in the green of the hills, and the still warm fragrance of midsummer hovered in the air like the touch of a hand. As La Mouette drifted with the tide a curlew rose with a whistle and sped away up river, and then, the ship losing way with the lack of wind as they came to the creek, the boats were lowered, and the warps made fast, and the ship was brought to her secret anchorage as the first shadows fell upon the water.

The chain rattled with a hollow sound in the deep pool beneath the trees, and the ship swung round to meet the last of the flood tide, and suddenly from nowhere came a swan and his mate, like two white barges sailing in company, and following them three cygnets, soft and brown. They went away down the creek, leaving a wake behind them as a vessel would, and presently when all was snugged down for the night and the decks deserted, the smell of cooking came from the galley forward, and the low murmur of voices as the men talked in the fo'c'sle.

The captain's boat waited beneath the ladder, and coming up from the cabin he called to Dona, who was leaning against the rail on the poop-deck watching the first star above a dark tree, and they pulled away down the creek where the swans had gone, the little boat lapping against the water.

Soon the fire glowed in the clearing, the dried sticks snapping and breaking, and this night they cooked bacon, curling and streaky and crisp, with bread that was burnt also by the fire and was toasted and black. They broke the bacon in their hands, and then brewed coffee, strong and bitter, in a saucepan with a bent handle, and afterwards he reached for his pipe and his tobacco, and Dona leant against his knee, her hands behind her head.

"And this," she said, watching the fire, "could be forever, if we wished. Could be tomorrow, and the next day, and a year ahead. And not only here, but in other countries, on other rivers, in lands of our own choosing."

"Yes," he said, "if we so wished. But Dona St. Columb is not Dona the cabin-boy. She is someone who has a life in another world, and even at this moment she is waking in the bedroom at Navron, with her fever gone, remembering only very faintly the dream she had. And she rises, and dresses, and sees to her household and her children."

"No," she said, "she has not woken yet, and the fever is still heavy upon her, and her dreams are of a loveliness that she never knew in her life before."

"For all that," he told her, "they are still dreams. And in the morning she will wake."

"No," she said. "No, no. Always this. Always the fire, and the dark night, and the supper we have cooked, and your hand here against my heart."

"You forget," he said, "that women are more primitive than men. For a time they will wander, yes, and play at love, and play at adventure. And then, like the birds do, they must make their nest. Instinct is too strong for them. Birds build the home they crave, and settle down into it, warm and safe, and have their babies."

"But the babies grow up," she said, "and fly away, and then the parent birds fly away too, and are free once more."

He laughed at her, staring into the fire, watching the flames.

"There is no answer, Dona," he said, "for I could sail away now in La Mouette and come back to you in twenty years' time, and what should I find but a placid, comfortable woman in place of my cabin-boy, with her dreams long forgotten, and I myself a weather-beaten mariner, stiff in the joints, with bearded face, and my taste for piracy gone with the spent years."