The Black Swan (Historical Novel). Rafael Sabatini

this, you might travel comfortably to Plymouth, and there find a sloop to put you across the Channel.'

      'True,' said Monsieur de Bernis. 'True! I had not thought of it.'

      The Major was conscious of a sudden apprehension that he might have said too much. To his dismay he heard Miss Priscilla voicing the idea which he feared he might have given to the Frenchman.

      'You will think of it now, monsieur?'

      Monsieur de Bernis' dark eyes glowed as they rested upon her; but his smile was wistful.

      'By my faith, mademoiselle, you must compel a man to do so.'

      Major Sands sniffed audibly at what he accounted an expression of irrepressible impudent Gallic gallantry. Then, after a slight pause, Monsieur de Bernis added with a deepening of his wistful smile:

      'But, alas! A friend awaits me in Sainte Croix. I am to cross with him to France.'

      The Major interposed, a mild astonishment in his voice.

      'I thought it was at Guadeloupe that you desired to be put ashore, and that your going to Sainte Croix was forced upon you by the Captain.'

      If he thought to discompose Monsieur de Bernis by confronting him with this contradiction, he was soon disillusioned. The Frenchman turned to him slowly still smiling, but the wistfulness had given place to a contemptuous amusement.

      'But why unveil the innocent deception which courtesy to a lady thrust upon me? It is more shrewd than kind, Major Sands.'

      Major Sands flushed. He writhed under the Frenchman's superior smile, and in his discomfort blundered grossly.

      'What need for deceptions, sir?'

      'Add, too: what need for courtesy? Each to his nature, sir. You convict me of a polite deceit, and discover yourself to be of a rude candour. Each of us in his different way is admirable.'

      'That is something to which I can't agree at all. Stab me if I can.'

      'Let mademoiselle pronounce between us, then,' the Frenchman smilingly invited.

      But Miss Priscilla shook her golden head. 'That would be to pronounce against one of you. Too invidious a task.'

      'Forgive me, then, for venturing to set it. Well leave the matter undecided.' He turned to Captain Bransome, 'You said, I think, Captain, that you are calling at Dominica.' Thus he turned the conversation into different channels.

      The Major was left with an uncomfortable sense of being diminished. It rankled in him, and found expression later when with Miss Priscilla he was once more upon the poop.

      'I do not think the Frenchman was pleased at being put down,' said he.

      At table the Major's scarcely veiled hostility to the stranger had offended her sense of fitness. In her eyes he had compared badly with the suave and easy Frenchman. His present smugness revived her irritation.

      'Was he put down?' said she. 'I did not observe it.'

      'You did not...' The prominent pale eyes seemed to swell in his florid face. Then he laughed boisterously. 'You were day-dreaming, Priscilla, surely. You cannot have attended. I let him see plainly that I was not to be hoodwinked by his contradictions. I'm never slow to perceive deceit. It annoyed him to be so easily exposed.'

      'He dissembled his annoyance very creditably.'

      'Oh, aye! As a dissembler I give him full credit. But I could see that I had touched him. Stab me, I could. D'ye perceive the extent of his dissimulation? First it was only that he had not thought of crossing the ocean in the Centaur. Then it was that he has a friend awaiting him in Sainte Croix, and I, knowing all the while that Sainte Croix was forced upon him by the Captain who could not be persuaded to land him, as he wished, at Guadeloupe. I wonder what the fellow has to hide that he should be so desperately clumsy?'

      'Whatever it is, it can be no affair of ours.'

      'You make too sure, perhaps. After all, I am an officer of the Crown, and it's scarcely less than my duty to be aware of all that happens in these waters.'

      'Why plague yourself? In a day or two he will have left us again.'

      'To be sure. And I thank God for 't.'

      'I see little cause for thanksgiving. Monsieur de Bernis should prove a lively companion on a voyage.'

      The Major's brows were raised. 'You conceive him lively?'

      'Did not you? Was there no wit in his parries when you engaged him?'

      'Wit! Lord! I thought him as clumsy a bar as I have met.'

      A black hat embellished by a sweeping plume of blue appeared above the break of the quarter-deck. Monsieur de Bernis was ascending the companion. He came to join them on the poop.

      The Major was disposed to regard his advent as an unbidden intrusion. But Miss Priscilla's eyes gleamed a welcome to the courtly Frenchman; and when she moved aside invitingly to the head of the day-bed, so as to make room for him to sit beside her, Major Sands must mask his vexation as best he could in chill civilities.

      Martinique by now was falling hazily astern, and the Centaur under a full spread of canvas was beating to westward with a larboard list that gently canted her yellow deck.

      Monsieur de Bernis commended the north-easterly breeze in terms of one familiar with such matters. They were fortunate in it, he opined. At this season of the year, the prevailing wind was from the north. He expressed the further opinion that if it held they should he off Dominica before tomorrow's dawn.

      The Major, not to be left behind by Monsieur de Bernis in the display of knowledge of Caribbean matters, announced himself astonished that Captain Bransome should he putting in at an island mainly peopled by Caribs, with only an indifferent French settlement at Roseau. The readiness of the Frenchman's answer took him by surprise.

      'For freights in the ordinary way I should agree with you, Major. Roseau would not be worth a visit; but for a Captain trading on his own account it can he very profitable. This, you may suppose to be the case of Captain Bransome.'

      The accuracy of his surmise was revealed upon the morrow, when they lay at anchor before Roseau, on the western side of Dominica. Bransome, who traded in partnership with his owners, went ashore for a purchase of hides, for which he had left himself abundant room under hatches. He knew of some French traders here, from whom he could buy at half the price he would have to pay in Martinique or elsewhere; for the Caribs who slew and flayed the beasts were content with infinitely less than it cost to procure and maintain the Negro slaves who did the work in the more established settlements.

      Since the loading of the hides was to delay them there for a day or two, Monsieur de Bernis proposed to his fellow passengers an excursion to the interior of the island, a proposal so warmly approved by Miss Priscilla that it was instantly adopted.

      They procured ponies ashore, and the three of them, attended only by Pierre, de Bernis' half-caste servant, rode out to view that marvel of Dominica, the boiling lake, and the fertile plains watered by the Layou.

      The Major would have insisted upon an escort. But Monsieur de Bernis, again displaying his knowledge of these regions, assured them that they would find the Caribs of Dominica a gentle, friendly race, from whom no evil was to be apprehended.

      'If it were otherwise,' he concluded, 'the whole ship's company would not suffice to protect us, and I should never have proposed the jaunt.'

      Priscilla rode that day between her two cavaliers; but it was the ready-witted de Bernis who chiefly held her attention, until Major Sands began to wonder whether the fellow's remarkable resemblance to his late Majesty might not extend beyond his personal appearance. Monsieur de Bernis made it plain, the Major thought, that he was endowed with the same gifts of spontaneous gallantry; and the Major was vexed to perceive signs that he possessed something of King Charles' attraction for the opposite sex.

      His alarm might have gone considerably deeper but for the soothing knowledge that in a day or two this long-legged,