The foaming fore shore/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THE BARTER-HOUSE
"LISTEN for the end of the dance, Lance," reminded Taylor as, half an hour later, he slipped over the rail of the Star of the Sea into his dory. "And watch for the two boats and don't lose a second. The thing must be done in a flash before Marie is missed. It's a good job I stowed my made fish aboard as they came from old Peter's flakes. The Graywing is ready for the sea except for some light tackle that I'm going up to the barter-house to get."
"Better be careful," cautioned Lance in farewell. "It's a drunken gang Peter has ashore. I'll do my part, all right. Don't worry about that."
Taylor pulled in to the wharf and zigzagging through the wild dance that was petering out to an end, went on up to Laval's barter-house. As he stepped into the lantern-lighted building that was crammed with all manner of sea gear he beheld old Peter himself and four of his cronies chuckling over their half-emptied glasses.
"Bon matin, Capitaine—seeing that nearly all the night is spent," gurgled old Peter. "Come and pledge my daughter's health,"
"Another time, Peter, when the liquor doesn't run so strong," evaded Taylor. "I just dropped in for that light tackle you put aside for me. The Graywing goes to my trap-berth for this morning's haul."
"Here it is, then," mumbled Laval. "Give me a hand, camarades!"
The five reached into a canvas-cluttered corner of the barter-house. Their hands flashed forth again, not with Taylor's tackle but with several yards of seine that settled on his shoulders. Caught unawares, like a lion in a net, he hurled himself across the floor with the five clinging desperately to the meshes that enveloped him.
"Diable!" snarled old Peter. "You would plan to elope with Marie—comment? You would steal off in separate dories and let Lance speak the words over your heads from the rail of the Star of the Sea and then dart south in the Graywing? Ciel, I am not so drunk as you think, Capitaine. Non, but sober enough to lurk in the shadow of the Graywing's sails and overhear you and Marie. The end of the dance the moment, too! Tres bien, then, there it is, the last scrape of the fiddles!"
As he struggled Taylor heard the wail of the violins die away, thumping feet leave the wharf and singing dancers pass along the beach.
"The end," taunted old Peter, almost face to face with him through the maze of meshes yet with the protection of that maze between. "Marie is stealing off in a dory. Oui, and I'll tell you something. The second dory is not lacking. It too is stealing off, and Admiral Pellier is in it.
"Ho! Ho! Do you understand? It is aboard the Esperance and not aboard the Graywing she will go. Pellier has a chaplain of his own, Blangard of the Groix, remember! A touch of wine and Marie will never know the difference of clergy nor of bridegrooms. Over their heads aboard the Esperance, I say, Blangard will speak the words, Blangard instead of Lance, and thus it will save a lot of trouble with the stubbornness of Marie!"
Peter finished with a diabolical chuckle at his own and Pellier's cleverness—Pellier the man of honor and fairness who fell before a mighty temptation when it came to the stake of Marie.
Taylor felt a pang like the thrust of ice in his heart. Then a red-hot surge of anger flooded over him.
"You devil, Peter!" he roared, wrenching to get his arms free from the binding seine. "You cold-blooded, shoal-born, shoal-slimed cod! First you barter her, and then you try to marry her by a trick. By"
With the colossal heaving, with the strength of a demon he rocked from wall to wall of the barter-house, crashing its trappings this way and that, dragging the five backward and forward with the tremendous Viking power that was in him. Two of them he pinned against the wall with his bulk and jerked off their feet in a sudden lurch so that their side of his twine prison was left for a second unweighted. In that second he writhed his right arm free and smashed old Peter full in the chest. Peter staggered the width of the room and fell backward upon a bundle of sailcloth, and before he could clamber up Taylor struck again and again and Peter's two cronies sprawled on top of him.
WHIPPING the seine into their faces with a final swing Taylor darted out of the barter-house doorway before the other pair could stop him. A riot raged in his heart as he ran down the wharf, straining his eyes out toward the Star of the Sea riding at anchorage amid the harbor craft. Though the night-shadow of the Château hills lay dark upon the water, the approaching dawn was lightening it a little, and he could discern the church yacht and his own Graywing astern of her.
There were no dories 'round the Star of the Sea—he must be in time! A wave of exultation swept him. A joyous cry burst from his lips—to change the next moment to a curse! 'Round the Star of the Sea's hull, the hull that had hidden them, broke two dories, the one spinning adrift with nobody in it, the other rocking to the struggling of two swaying figures.
Pellier. Marie. He recognized them even in the half-darkness, even before Marie's pitiful cry came across the harbor to him. "Help, help!" she screamed. "It is Pellier. He is taking"
The rest was cut short, but Taylor had heard enough. With a leap he was afloat, sending his dory surging out.
"Lance, did you see?" he shrilled as he boiled by the Star of the Sea. "Pellier got her before she made your yacht. Peter trapped me in the barter-house, but I broke away."
"But where," yelled Lance, peering after his dory through the dark with his short-sighted eyes, "where in the name of Heaven is he taking her?"
"The Esperance!" Taylor snarled back. "He'll ply her with wine and the Groix's chaplain will marry them."
At Taylor's information Lance threw up his hands in holy horror, a fantom of supplication in the gloom, but Taylor himself was past the Star of the Sea and away, driving his dory like a madman to overtake the struggling pair ahead, when like a moth out of the dusk the Esperance, her deck-load discharged and trimmed for speed, winged in between.
Taylor heard the metallic clash of tackles. Under full sail the schooner heaved the dory and the two figures in on the run and drove on out of Château harbor. Like a moth she went, and like the black bat that flits in the wake of the moth the warship Groix slipped after.
"Convoyed, Capitaine," half-cackled, half-croaked the voice of old Peter from his wharf, "oui, convoyed to a place where your Graywing dare not poke. The honeymoon's at Humbermouth!"
His red wrath gone with the flicker of the Esperance's sails, suddenly left white and trembling, Taylor turned his eyes shoreward to see old Peter dimly outlined on his stages by one of his kerosene flares, one hand to his croaking chest that was still heaving in asthmatic jerks from the effect of the Gloucester captain's blow.
White and trembling, his red wrath gone but with the spirit passion that glows like the white heat of fused metal, he shook his fist at the planter.
"You've taken her, you and Pellier!" he answered. "You've stolen her from me, Peter, but as sure as the sea winds blow and the tides turn I'll come again to Château to take her back!"