Carette of Sark | Page 5

shingle, he stood back among the capstans under the cliff and
watched quietly.

The bearers placed their burden in one of the boats drawn up on the
beach, and straightened their backs gratefully. They ran the boat
rasping over the stones into the water, and two of them sprang in and
rowed steadily out to sea. The others stood, hands on hips, watching
them silently till the boat turned the corner of Les Lâches and passed
out of sight, and then their tongues were loosed.
"So!" said one. "That's the end of Monsieur Martel."
"Nom de Gyu! We'll hope so," said the other. "But I'd sooner seen him
dead and buried."
"'Crais b'en!" said the other with a knowing nod. For all the world knew
that if Paul Martel had never come to Sercq, Rachel Carré might have
become Mistress Hamon instead of Madame Martel--and very much
better for her if she had.
For Martel, in spite of his taking ways and the polished manners of his
courting days, had proved anything but a good husband, and he had
wound up a long period of indifference and neglect with a grievous
bodily assault which had stirred the clan spirit of the Islanders into
active reprisal. They would make of it an object-lesson to the other
Island girls which would be likely to further the wooings of the Island
lads for a long time to come.
Martel, you see, came from Guernsey, but he was only half a Guernsey
man at that. His father was a Manche man from Cherbourg, who
happened to get wrecked on the Hanois, and settled and married in
Peter Port. Paul Martel had grown up to the sea. He had sailed to
foreign parts and seen much of the world. He was an excellent sailor,
and when he tired of a roving life turned his abilities to account in those
peculiar channels of trade which the situation of the Islands and their
ancient privileges particularly fitted them for. The Government in
London had, indeed, tried, time after time, to suppress the free-trading,
and passed many laws and ordinances against it, but these attempts had
so far only added zest to the business, and seemed rather to stimulate
that which they were intended to suppress.

Martel was successful as a smuggler, and might in time have come to
own his own boat and run his own cargoes if he had kept steady.
The Government now and again had harsh fits which made things
difficult for the time being in Guernsey, and at such times the smaller
islands were turned to account, and the goods were stored and shipped
from there. And that is how he came to frequent Sercq and made the
acquaintance of Rachel Carré.
George Hamon, I know, never to his dying day forgave himself for
having been the means of bringing Martel to Sercq, and truly he got
paid for it as bitterly as man could.
Martel might, indeed, have found his way there in any case, but that, to
Hamon, did not in any degree lessen the weight of the fact that it was
he brought him there to assist in some of his free-trading schemes. And
if he had guessed what was to come of it, he would never have handled
keg or bale as long as he lived rather than, with his own hand, spoil his
life as he did.
For a time they were very intimate, he and Martel. Then Martel made
up to Rachel Carré, and their friendship turned to hatred, the more
venomous for what had gone before.
But even George Hamon admits that Paul Martel was an unusually
good-looking fellow, with very attractive manners when he chose, and
a knowledge of the world and its ways, and of men and women, beyond
the ordinary, and he won Rachel Carré's heart against her head and in
the teeth of her father's opposition.
Perhaps if her mother had been alive things might have been different.
But she died when Rachel was eight years old, and her father was much
away at the fishing, for the farm was poorer then than it became
afterwards, and Martel found his opportunities and turned them to
account.
I do not pretend to understand fully how it came about--beyond the fact
that the little god of love goes about his work blindfold, and that

women do the most unaccountable things at times. Even in the most
momentous matters they are capable of the most grievous mistakes,
though, on the other hand, that same heart instinct also leads them at
times to wisdom beyond the gauging of man's intelligence. A man
reasons and keeps tight hand on his feelings; a woman feels and knows;
and sometimes a leap in the dark lands one safely, and sometimes not.
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