silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.
The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial understanding of it all in her looks.
"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.
"Because we've won, you silly!"
"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."
"We're English"—and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.
"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates! And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the Crescent off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who received a large gold medal for the feat.]
His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have cared to wear.
"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no conviction to the boy's mind.
But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was too busy thinking to speak.
"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.
"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."
"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear smartly between his big thumb and finger.
"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll speak."
"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's ear but keeping a grip on his shoulder. "I'm not going to harm you. All I want to know is whether you've seen any sizable ships banging about here lately.—You know what I mean!"
The small boy knew perfectly what he meant, and his lip curled at thought of being mistaken for the kind of boy who would open his mouth to a preventive man. He shook his head, however.
"Not, eh? Well, you know the neighbourhood anyway. Take me to the Boutiques."
"The Boutiques?" cried Carette.
"Ah! The Boutiques. You know where the Boutiques are, I can see."
They both knew the Boutiques. It would be a very small child on Sercq who did not know that much. The small boy knew, too, that both the Boutiques and the Gouliot caves had nooks and niches in their higher ranges, boarded off and secured with stout padlocked doors, where goods were stored for transfer to the cutters and chasse-marées as occasion offered, just as they were in the great warehouses of the Guernsey merchants. He had vague ideas that so long as the goods were on dry land the preventive men could not touch them, but of that he was not perfectly certain. These troublesome Customs' officers were constantly having new powers conferred on them. He had overheard the men discussing them many a time, and the very fact of this man trying to find the Boutiques was in itself suspicious. But the man was a stranger. That was evident from his uncouth talk and foolish ways, and the small boy's mind was made up in a moment.
Carette was watching anxiously, with a wild idea in her mind that if she flung herself at the preventive man's feet and held them tightly, the boy might wriggle away and escape.
But the boy had a brighter scheme than that. He turned and led the way inland, and dropped a wink to Carette as he did so, and her anxious little brain jumped to the fact that the stranger was to be misled.
Her sharpened faculties perceived that the best way to second his efforts was to pretend a vehement objection to his action and so lend colour to it.
"Don't you do it, Phil!" she cried, dancing round them. "Don't you do it, or I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
Phil marched steadily on with the heavy hand gripping his shoulder.
"Sensible boy!" said the preventive man.
As everyone knows, the Boutiques lie hid among the northern cliffs by the Eperquerie. But, once lose sight of the sea, amid the tangle of wooded lanes which traverse the Island, and, without the guidance of the sun, it needs a certain amount of familiarity with the district to know exactly where one will come out.
The small boy stolidly led the way past Beaumanoir, and Carette wailed like a lost soul alongside. Jeanne Falla looked out as they passed and called out to know what was happening.
"This wicked man is making Phil show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette, and the wicked man chuckled, and so did Jeanne Falla.
They passed the cottages at La Vauroque. The women and children crowded the doors.
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