"A one-armed man and a priest!" said the man to himself, with an expressive jerk of the head. And, indeed, all the men of Yport had sailed for the Northern fisheries, leaving the village to the women and children, and the maimed.
Within the house there were sounds of some one astir.
"One comes!" cried a cheery voice belonging a.s.suredly to some one who was brave, for none expects to be called from his bed to hear good news.
A single bolt was drawn and the door thrown open. The cure--a little man--stood back, shading the candle with his hand.
"Ah, Jean Belfort! it is you."
"Yes, I and my one arm," replied the man, coming in and closing the door. The rain dripped from his oilskins to the clean floor.
"Ah, but this is no night to complain. Better be on sh.o.r.e with one arm than at sea with two to-night."
The little cure looked at his visitor with bright eyes, and a shake of the head. A quick-spoken man this, with a little square mouth, a soft heart, a keen sense of humour.
"Why have you got me from my bed, malcontent?" he asked.
"Because there are some out there that want your prayers," replied Belfort, jerking his head towards the sea. He was an unbeliever, this maimed sailor, who read the Pet.i.t Journal, and talked too loudly in the Cafe de la Marine of an evening. He spoke mockingly now.
"One can pray in the morning. Come with me while I get on some clothes--if it is a wreck," said the priest, simply.
The man followed him to a little bare room, of which the walls were decorated by two cheap sacred prints and a crucifix, such as may be bought for ten sous at any fair on the coast.
"Never mind your hat," said the priest, seeing the man"s fingers at the strings of his sou"wester. "Give me my great boots from the cupboard. A wreck is it? The summer storms are always the worst. Is it a boat?"
"Who knows?" replied the man. "It is my wife who looked from the window an hour ago, and saw a light at sea two points to the east of north--a red light and then a green and then the masthead light."
"A steamer."
"So it would appear; and now there are no lights. That is all."
The priest was dressed, and now pulled on a great oilskin coat. There are men who seem compact in mind and body, impressing their fellows with a sense of that restfulness which comes of a.s.sured strength. This little priest was one of these, and the mental impress that he left upon all who came in contact with him was to the effect that there is nothing in a human life that need appal, no sorrow beyond the reach of consolation--no temptation too strong to be resisted. The children ran after him in the streets, their faces expectant of a joke. The women in the doorways gave a little sigh as he pa.s.sed. A woman will often sigh at the thought of that which another woman has lost, and this touches a whole gamut of thoughts which are above the reach of a man"s mind.
The priest tied the strings of a sou"wester under his pink chin. He was little more than a boy after all--or else he was the possessor of a very young heart.
"Between us we make a whole man--you and I," he said cheerily. "Perhaps we can do something."
They went out into the night, the priest locking the door and pausing to hide the key under the mat in the porch. They all keep the house-door key under the mat at Yport. In the narrow street, which forms the whole village, running down the valley to the sea, they met the full force of the gale, and stood for a moment breathlessly fighting against it. In a lull they pushed on.
"And the tide?" shouted the priest.
"It is high at four o"clock--a spring tide, and the wind in the north-west--not standing room on the sh.o.r.e against the cliff for a man from here to Glainval."
At high tide the waves beat against the towering cliff all along this grim coast, and a man standing on the turf may not recognize his son on the rocks below, while the human voice can only span the distance in calmest weather. There are s.p.a.ces of three and four miles between the gaps in the great and inaccessible bluffs. An evil lee-sh.o.r.e to have under one"s quarter--one of the waste places of the world which Nature has set apart for her own use. When Nature speaks it is with no uncertain voice.
"There is old Loisette," shouted the cure. "He may have gone to bed sober."
"There is no reason to suppose it," shouted the man in reply. "No, my father, if there is aught to be done, you and I must do it."
What with the wind and the flannel ear-flaps of the sou"wester, it was hard to make one"s self heard, and the two faces almost touched--the unbeliever who knew so little, and the priest who knew not only books but men. They made their way to the little quay, or, rather, the few yards of sea-wall that protect the houses at the corner of the street.
But here they could not stand, and were forced to retire to the lee side of the Hotel de la Plage, which, as all know, stands at the corner, with two timorous windows turned seaward, and all the rest seeking the comfort of the street.
In a few words Belfort explained where the light had been seen, and where, according to his judgment, the steamer must have taken the rocks.
"If the good G.o.d has farther use for any of them, he will throw them on the sh.o.r.e a kilometre to the east of us, where the wire rope descends from the cliff to the sh.o.r.e for the seaweed," said the priest.
The other nodded.
"What must be done must be done quickly. Let us go," said the little cure in his rather bustling manner, at which the great, slow-limbed fishermen were wont to laugh.
"Where to?"
"Along the sh.o.r.e."
"With a rising tide racing in before a north-westerly wind?" said Belfort, grimly, and shook his head.
"Why not? You have your two legs, and there is Some One--up there!"
"I shouldn"t have thought it," answered the man, glancing up at the storm-driven clouds. "However, where a priest can go a one-armed man can surely follow. We need lanterns and a bottle of brandy."
"Yes; I will wait and watch here while you fetch them."
The priest, left alone, peered round the corner, shading his eyes with his soft, white hand, upon which the cold rain pattered. To the east of him he knew that there were three miles of almost impa.s.sable sh.o.r.e, of unbroken, unscalable cliff. To the west of him the same. On the one hand Fecamp, five miles away by a cliff path that none would attempt by night, nine miles by road. On the other hand Etretat, still further by road and cliff path. Inland a few farms and many miles of forest. He and Belfort had stumbled over the fallen telegraph wires as they struggled down the village street. No; if there was a wreck out there in the darkness, and men, clinging half-drowned to the rigging, were looking towards the sh.o.r.e, they had better look elsewhere. The sea, like the wind, treated Yport as the mouth of a funnel, and a hundred cross currents were piling up such waves as no boat could pa.s.s, though the Yport women were skilful as any man with oar or sail.
Presently Belfort returned carrying two lanterns.
"I have told her that we will not quit the seawall," he said with a short laugh.
And straightway they both clambered over the wall and down the iron ladder to the beach. A meandering, narrow pathway is worn on the weed-grown chalk from the village to the washing-ground on the beach, a mile to the eastward, where, at low tide, a spring of fresh water wells up amid the shingle and the rock. Along this pathway the two men made their way, the cure following on his companion"s heel. They stumbled and fell many times. At every step they slipped, for their boots were soaked, and the chalk was greasy and half decomposed by the salt water.
At times they paused to listen, and through the roar of the wind and sea came the distant note of a bell clanging continuously.
"It is the bell on Fecamp pier," said Belfort. "The mist is coming before the dawn."
To the east the long arm of Fecamp light swung slowly round the horizon, from the summit of the great bluff of Notre Dame du Salut, as if sweeping the sea and elbowing away all that dared approach so grim a coast.
"Ah!" exclaimed the priest, "I am in the water--the tide is coming up."
To their left a wall of foam and spray shut off all view of the sea. On the right the cliff rose, a vast barrier, and cut the sky in two. These two men had nothing in common. They had, indeed, standing between them that sword which was brought into the world nineteen hundred years ago, and is still unsheathed. But neither thought of turning back. It had been agreed between them that they should make what speed they could along the sh.o.r.e, and only turn back at the last moment, searching the sea and beach as they returned in the light of dawn.
Belfort, the leader, the expert in night and tide and wind, led the way with one eye on the sea, the other on the eastern sky, which was now showing grey through tossing clouds.
"Here we must turn," he said suddenly, "and the last half-mile to the sea-wall we shall have to wade."
They paused and looked up to the sky. In half an hour the day would come, but in seventy minutes the breakers must beat against the sheer cliff.
"None has reached the sh.o.r.e alive and with his senses," said Belfort, looking out to sea. "He would have seen our lights and come to us, or called if he had broken limbs. It is useless to search the sh.o.r.e too closely. We shall find them here at the edge, half in, half out, especially those with life belts, such as we find any winter morning after bad weather."
He spoke grimly, as one who knew that it is not the deep sea that must be paid its toll, but the shoal water where the rocks and quicksands and crabs and gulls are waiting. They made their way back in silence, and slowly a new grey day crept into life. At last they could see the horizon and read the face of the water still torn into a seething chaos of foam. There was no ship upon them. If there had been a wreck the storm had done its work thoroughly. Belfort climbed to the summit of a rock, and looked back towards Fecamp. Then he turned and searched the sh.o.r.e towards Yport.
"There is one," he cried, "half in, half out, as I said. We shall cheat the crabs at all events, my father."