Black Cat/'Le Bretagne'

by W. A. Fraser

 

“Le Bretagne”

BY W. A. FRASER

IT was two o’clock when Le Bretagne spread her white sails and crept out toward the eastern sky. It was six when the gray wall of the sea rose and blotted out the ship as though she had gone to the bottom.

Then the dark figure which had been outlined against the crimson of the big, red setting sun turned wearily and crept over the sands towards Arichat—it was Marie, returning to her newly widowed home.

“Leon said he would come at the time of Christmas, so why should I fear?” she kept muttering, “and Leon will keep his word in life or death. ‘Even if I’m dead, Marie,’ he said, joking me, ‘I will come to thee at Christmas.’”

On the farther side of L’Isle Madam the sea was moaning as Marie reached her cottage.

One month had gone—one month of the loveliest weather—ideal weather for the fishing, the old wives said, only they used a stronger word than “ideal” to express their satisfaction.

It was just thirty-four days since the gray wall of water had risen between Marie and her Leon. There was no mistaking the day, for she had just drawn a line through the date, the nineteenth of October. Not for a moment had Marie slumbered that night. The sea had gone to rest with a sigh, a sigh of utter weariness, as though the wind had called it to battle to the death; only the sea heard the challenge, the sea and Marie—she knew.

The calm that rested over everything was awful; it was as though all life had gone out of the world. And so it was when the green sky that was in the west changed to blood red: still not a breath of air. Toward noon the glassy water grew dark, where little puffs of wind ruffled its surface.

These light winds came from the west; but away down in the southeast, queer, torn-looking clouds were rising above the dead horizon line. The sea seemed heaped up there as though a great pressure behind were driving the whole ocean landward.

The clouds seemed to hang as though there was no wind moving them. Old sailors shaded their eyes with their hands, and looked off to the south and east, seaward, and shook their heads; there was a restless feeling over everything.

By night the clouds had risen like a wall, stretching from the south to the northeast, but still it was clear overhead; no clouds, only a murky, yellow haze.

Fitful blasts of wind came tearing through the quaint old fishing town of Arichat, making signs and shutters tremble and creak for an instant, and then silence,—that dreadful silence that seemed to still the very beating of one’s heart.

That night Marie prayed as though she were pleading for her soul: “O Holy Mother, plead for me, even as thou hadst a Son,” and then the hot flood of tears fell fast, blinding and scorching, and choking the full heart. Words were vain; long she knelt beside her humble cot, and over and over pleaded in the same words, “Save my Leon.” The promise of low masses to be said were made, with scarcely a knowledge of what she was uttering, the cry, “Save my Leon,” driving all else before it.

And outside, as she knelt, the wind moaned at the casement, and the gusts were coming faster and stronger now. The moon, which had looked down like a baleful ball of fire through the murky yellow of the upper sky, had been swallowed up in a vault black as ink.

With a great sob Marie rose, and looked from her door across the waste of heaving waters. ’Twas just across there that Leon had gone, his jaunty craft careening gracefully as the fresh breeze sped her on her way; to-night only the fitful gleam of a phosphorescent-capped wave was seen as it rose above its fellows for a moment, and then was lost in that awful gloom.

Why should I fear?” Marie was trying to persuade herself; “Leon must be far away now, out of reach of this coming storm”—and then a sob would choke her, and only “Holy Mother, plead for me and my Leon,” would give her peace.

In the morning the eastern shore of L'Isle Madam was shrouded in seething spray. The breakers were thundering at her guarding rocks. By night the world was spray covered—the world of L'Isle Madam. The sky and the earth and the sea were one. And still from the southeast the storm drove, and all that night.

And in the morning of the second day the crash of breaking timbers mingled with the boom of the mighty waves as they clashed against the granite walls.

People were hurrying towards the surf-beaten shore. Her long hair tossing in the maddened breeze, Marie rushed after them; in her heart the cry that had been there for so many hours, “Holy Mother, save my Leon!”

“Yes, yes; it’s Le Bretagne," an old man was saying, slowly lowering his glass as Marie came up to the group of people who were straining their eyes seaward. “Her anchors are out,” he continued, “but she cannot live in such a gale under that strain, and if she parts her cable she will go to pieces on the rocks.”

His words were scarcely audible above the shrieking of the wind; but Marie heard, and there, among those rough fishermen, she knelt and prayed, over and over again, out of the choking fulness of her heart, “Holy Mother, give my Leon.” The awful solemnity of the scene touched their rough hearts, and hats were doffed, and heads bowed, as the young wife prayed to her God in that living gale.

And then, as if in mockery of all things human, a mighty wave, mightier than any of its fellows, and following in the wake of two scarcely less mighty, broke over the Bretagne, and buried her beneath its many tons of foam-lashed water. The vessel swayed, trembled, and disappeared before their very eyes.

Two men were holding Marie now. “I will go to him! He is calling me!” she shrieked. “O God! will no one save him?”

The bronzed faces of the fisher-folk were turned away each from the other. The salt spray was on their beards, but in their eyes was that of which they were ashamed.

Then they led her back to the house, the little house that Leon had taken her to only a few weeks ago. And two of them watched into the gray of the morning, for ’neath oil skins the fishers’ hearts are warm.

That was the third night, and still she slept not. The storm was dying now, and moaning, together they passed away—the fury of grief and the rage of the storm. And for that day, and for many days the great grief had broken her mind.

Storm and sunshine, day in and day out, she sat down on the beach, and questioned the passers as to how many days to Christmas till her Leon would come home; for had he not said that he would come at Christmas, at the glad time of the year, and was not his word as the law among the fisher-folk, it was so true? And did she not pray every night to the Holy Mother to intercede for her, and bring her Leon home? And the masses that had been said for Leon, were they not to bring him home, too?

Poor little Marie, her mind, which was like unto a child's, could not understand that the mass which Father Dupré had said, had been to take him to that other home; for the good Father had said mass for the repose of the souls of the men lying out there in Le Bretagne.

And then a wonderful thing happened. Many days after, at the time of Christmas, again the cry of Le Bretagne rang through the streets of Arichat; and again was there much of horror in the cry, for though the sea was calm now, there was Le Bretagne slowly sailing into port; and was not Le Bretagne at the bottom of the sea, and all hands drowned?

Small wonder that the browned faces were blanched now, as the fisher-folk lined up on the sand, as they had on that day two moons before.

“What sorcery is this?” they asked each other. It was Le Bretagne; they know her as they knew their own houses. Spirit hands were sailing her, for on her decks no one moved.

A solemn hush settled down upon them; few spoke, and when they did it Was with bated breath. What evil was this? for good it could not be.

'Twas Marie who had first seen the ship. Had her prayers worked this magic?

Nearer and nearer the dread ship came, until but a short way out from the shore she stopped, and swung to an anchor. Invisible hands had anchored her, for there was the cable right enough, running out from her bow, as she lifted lazily to the long ground swell.

“Take me to my Leon,” Marie pleaded of the awe-struck fishermen, “he is calling me. Do you not see that his boats are washed away?”

Shamed by the presence of the women, four stout fishermen brought up a boat, and, taking Marie with them, rowed off to the ship that was like a phantom.

“Stay with us, ma petite amie," the fisherwomen pleaded with Marie. As well had they striven to check the ways of the wind.

How silent the ship was as the boat glided under her stern! Not a sound, not a voice; no movement, only the lap, lap, lap of the waters against her wooden sides.

The men crossed themselves aa Dumont, the bravest fisherman in all Arichat, rose up, and, with blanched cheeks, caught his boat hook in Le Bretagne's rail.

How low she was in the water; as they stood up in their boat they could see across her deck—not across did they see, for half way they saw something—something which caused them to shudder, and beg of little Marie to stop in the boat.

But Marie had risen and seen, too, and with a cry that rang in the ears of those four men until their dying day, she sprang up the side of the ship, and stood on the slippery, slimy deck.

Her Leon was there, lashed to the mast. She threw herself upon his poor bloated form.

The four understood. Dumont looked down an open hatch:

“Her salt is gone!” he exclaimed.

That brief sentence explained it all. She had gone to the fisheries loaded with salt. When the water had washed all the salt out of her hold, being a wooden ship, she had floated, dragging her one remaining anchor until it had caught in the good-holding ground near the shore.

Gently they lifted Marie away from her dead lover.

Christmas had come to Marie. The Holy Mother had heard her prayer, and she was with Leon.

And every Christmas since, in Arichat, a mass is said for the repose of the soul of little Marie, and the lover who rose from the sea to come to her, even in death.