Louis Tracy - Flower of the Gorse

All this, and more, Yvonne caught in one wide-eyed glance. She saw every touch of color, every changeful flicker of light on the wet deck and glistening oilskins. Tollemache alone supplied a different note. The light brown squares of the cork jacket, and the dust-colored canvas straps that clasped it to his body, stood out in marked relief. He, who had been overboard and submerged for a few seconds, looked bone dry. The others, wet as he no doubt, Ingersoll alone excepted, seemed to have come straight from the depths.

But Peridot, watching the sea with sidelong glance, suddenly bent in a very frenzy of exertion, and Yvonne, thrusting her right foot against the low gunwale, put the tiller to port and leaned against it until her left knee touched the deck. The men at the oars imitated her as best they might, while striving to keep the boat moving.

At the first mighty pull of the partly raised sail the Hirondelle flinched and fell back a little. Then she took hold, as sailors put it, and careened under the strain until the iron socket on the starboard sweep was wrenched off its pin, and Tollemache and the sailor were hard pressed to keep it from swinging inboard and dealing Yvonne a blow. Something black and sinister showed for a second in the yeasting froth beneath the boat's quarter; whether rock or patch of seaweed none could tell, though five pairs of eyes saw it.

Peridot's call came shrilly, "Keep her there, Ma'mselle!" Back swung the tiller, and Yvonne "kept her there," though during a long minute the Hirondelle tore at the rudder as a startled horse snatches at the bit, and it seemed as if she must capsize without fail.

Again the Breton's cry rang out, "Ease her now, Ma'mselle!"

The boat fell away before the wind. Soon she was on an even keel, save for the unavoidable rolling and pitching that resulted from the furious seas. But, if stout canvas and trustworthy cordage held, they were safe as though tied to the quay in the land-locked harbor at Pont Aven. Already Les Verrés were a furlong or more in the rear. It was impossible to see what had become of the Stella, because the spray was leaping high over the reef, until its irregular crests were bitten off by the gale. But a fishing smack which had gallantly put out from Brigneau was signaled back before it crossed the bar, and the signal station was hoisting a fresh set of flags which spelled in the lingua franca of the ocean, "Well done, Concarneau 415!" which was as near the Hirondelle's name as the watchers on shore could get on the spur of the moment.

Peridot paid Yvonne the greatest of all compliments by not coming aft to relieve her. But her father, who had betrayed no flurry even when death seemed unavoidable, drew near, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You're another Grace Darling, my dear!" was all he said.

But the look accompanying the words was enough, and the girl's eyes began to smart painfully, because the sudden moisture in them revealed how they had suffered from the spindrift.

And again, by sending her below on an errand of mercy, he only added subtly to Peridot's tribute.

"We can spare you now, Yvonne," he said. "Tell those men to come on deck, and you give an eye to the lady. You have some dry clothes down there. If she has no bones broken, she will recover more quickly in a warm bunk than under any other conditions. Get her undressed, and give her a little cognac. Take some yourself, – don't spare it, – and pass the bottle up here."

He took her place at the tiller, and she made off at once, only pausing to pat Lorry's wet and shaggy head.

Six men came up the companion stairway; but two returned at her call to lift the injured men into a lower and an upper bunk on the same side. They had contrived already to bandage the broken arm with handkerchiefs. The sprained ankle they could not deal with. The man with a broken arm was making some outcry; but the other sufferer was patient and even smiling.

"Gawd bless yer, Miss!" he said to Yvonne when he discerned her identity in the dim light of the cabin. "If it 'adn't a been fer you an' yer shipmites, we on the Stella 'ad as much chawnce as a lump o' ice in hell's flimes!"

The Cockney accent was new in Yvonne's ear, and its quaintness helped to soften the speaker's forcible simile.

"You'll soon be all right," she assured him. "We'll reach Pont Aven within the hour, and the good folk there will look after you splendidly. Please lie still now, as I must pin a blanket across these two bunks."

Then she was left alone with the insensible woman, who was alive, the sailors said, but completely unconscious. She had fainted, they believed, when the shaft snapped and the yacht was like to be lost forthwith. The immersion in the sea seemed to have revived her for a few seconds; but she swooned off again in the cabin, and, while the boat was lurching so heavily, they thought it wiser to pillow her head on a coat and not attempt to restore her senses.

On deck the captain of the Stella had picked out Ingersoll as the probable owner of the Hirondelle. He came and stood by the artist's side.

"Is this craft yours, Sir?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"And is that young lady your daughter, Sir?"

"Yes."

"Well, I need hardly say that we owe our lives to her, and you, and your two friends. I've seen some rum things durin' thirty years at sea; but I've never seen anything to ekal your pluck in runnin' into that death trap. And that girl of yours – the way she behaved! Well, there! I never could talk much. This time I'm clean stumped!"

"We did what we could. The real credit for your rescue lies with that cool-headed Breton fisherman yonder. Is the poor fellow who was killed the owner of the Stella?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And the lady is his wife?"

"Yes, Sir. Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Carmac. Look out, Sir! You must ha forgotten you were leaning against the tiller."

The sailor acted promptly in bringing the Hirondelle back on her course; but, owing to her quickness in answering the helm, she had swung round a couple of points when an involuntary movement, a sort of flinching on Ingersoll's part, caused her to change direction.

Peridot came aft, smiling and debonair. "We're all a bit shaken, Monsieur," he said, noting the increased pallor of Ingersoll's ordinarily rather delicate-looking face. "A tot of cognac, eh? That's what we want. What do you say, Monsieur?"

The bluff English skipper had caught the key word of the sentence, and the Breton's merry eye supplied a full translation.

"Good for you, my hearty!" said he. "Gimme one fair pull at a bottle of decent stuff now, an' I'll load you to the bung with the same once we're ashore."

Peridot had stipulated that the Hirondelle should start on her homeward run "not a minute later than three o'clock." He had cast off from the wharf at Le Pouldu slightly before that hour; but the wreck of the Stella and its attendant circumstances – not least being the necessity enforced by the change of wind to take the deep-sea course after leaving the reef – cost a good deal of time. As a consequence daylight had almost failed before the bar of the Aven was crossed.

On Pointe d'ar Vechen, within thirty feet of the Port Manech Hotel, stands a tiny lighthouse which sheds a mild beam over the entrance to the estuary. It is essentially a harbor light. A broad white band covers the safe channel extending from Les Verrés to l'Isle Verte, a red sector forbids the former, and a green one indicates the narrow inside passage between reef and mainland.

In crossing the bar, of course, each color became visible in turn. Ingersoll had seen the light scores of times. Never a week passed in summer that he did not spend a day, or even three days, at sea with the fishermen. His studies of the sardine fleet, in particular, were greatly in request.