Part 39 (1/2)
At the moment when the moon was rising, the tide being high and the sea being quiet, in the little strait of Li-Hou, the solitary keeper of the island of Li-Hou was considerably startled. A long black object slowly pa.s.sed between the moon and him. This dark form, high and narrow, resembled a winding-sheet spread out and moving. It glided along the line of the top of the wall formed by the ridges of rock. The keeper of Li-Hou fancied that he had beheld the Black Lady.
The White Lady inhabits the Tau de Pez d'Amont; the Grey Lady, the Tau de Pez d'Aval; the Red Lady, the Silleuse, to the north of the Marquis Bank; and the Black Lady, the Grand Etacre, to the west of Li-Houmet. At night, when the moon s.h.i.+nes, these ladies stalk abroad, and sometimes meet.
That dark form might undoubtedly be a sail. The long groups of rocks on which she appeared to be walking, might in fact be concealing the hull of a bark navigating behind them, and allowing only her sail to be seen.
But the keeper asked himself, what bark would dare, at that hour, to venture herself between Li-Hou and the Pecheresses, and the Anguillieres and Leree Point? And what object could she have? It seemed to him much more probable that it was the Black Lady.
As the moon was pa.s.sing the clock-tower of St. Peter in the Wood, the serjeant at Castle Rocquaine, while in the act of raising the drawbridge of the castle, distinguished at the end of the bay beyond the Haute Canee, but nearer than the Sambule, a sailing-vessel which seemed to be steadily dropping down from north to south.
On the southern coast of Guernsey behind Pleinmont, in the curve of a bay composed entirely of precipices and rocky walls rising peak-shaped from the sea, there is a singular landing-place, to which a French gentleman, a resident of the island since 1855, has given the name of ”The Port on the Fourth Floor,” a name now generally adopted. This port, or landing-place, which was then called the Moie, is a rocky plateau half-formed by nature, half by art, raised about forty feet above the level of the waves, and communicating with the water by two large beams laid parallel in the form of an inclined plane. The fis.h.i.+ng-vessels are hoisted up there by chains and pulleys from the sea, and are let down again in the same way along these beams, which are like two rails. For the fishermen there is a ladder. The port was, at the time of our story, much frequented by the smugglers. Being difficult of access, it was well suited to their purposes.
Towards eleven o'clock, some smugglers--perhaps the same upon whose aid Clubin had counted--stood with their bales of goods on the summit of this platform of the Moie. A smuggler is necessarily a man on the look out, it is part of his business to watch. They were astonished to perceive a sail suddenly make its appearance beyond the dusky outline of Cape Pleinmont. It was moonlight. The smugglers observed the sail narrowly, suspecting that it might be some coast-guard cutter about to lie in ambush behind the Great Hanway. But the sail left the Hanways behind, pa.s.sed to the north-west of the Boue Blondel, and was lost in the pale mists of the horizon out at sea.
”Where the devil can that boat be sailing?” asked the smuggler.
That same evening, a little after sunset, some one had been heard knocking at the door of the old house of the Bu de la Rue. It was a boy wearing brown clothes and yellow stockings, a fact that indicated that he was a little parish clerk. An old fisherwoman prowling about the sh.o.r.e with a lantern in her hand, had called to the boy, and this dialogue ensued between the fisherwoman and the little clerk, before the entrance to the Bu de la Rue:--
”What d'ye want, lad?”
”The man of this place.”
”He's not there.”
”Where is he?”
”I don't know.”
”Will he be there to-morrow?”
”I don't know.”
”Is he gone away?”
”I don't know.”
”I've come, good woman, from the new rector of the parish, the Reverend Ebenezer Caudray, who desires to pay him a visit.”
”I don't know where he is.”
”The rector sent me to ask if the man who lives at the Bu de la Rue would be at home to-morrow morning.”
”I don't know.”
III
A QUOTATION FROM THE BIBLE
During the twenty-four hours which followed, Mess Lethierry slept not, ate nothing, drank nothing. He kissed Deruchette on the forehead, asked after Clubin, of whom there was as yet no news, signed a declaration certifying that he had no intention of preferring a charge against anyone, and set Tangrouille at liberty.