Eager to know
The worst, and with that fatal certainty
To terminate intolerable dread,
He spurred his courser forward--all his fears
Too surely are fulfilled.--SOUTHEY
Contrary winds made the voyage of the THROSTLE much more tardy than
had been reckoned on by Berenger's impatience; but hope was before
him, and he often remembered his days in the little vessel as much
happier than he had known them to be at the time.
It was in the calm days of right October that Captain Hobbs at
length was putting into the little harbour nearest to La Sablerie.
Berenger, on that morning, had for the first time been seized by a
fit of anxiety as to the impression his face would make, with its
terrible purple scar, great patch, and bald forehead, and had
brought out a little black velvet mask, called a tour de nez,
often used in riding to protect the complexion, intending to
prepare Eustacie for his disfigurement.
He had fastened on a carnation-coloured sword-knot, would a scarf of the same colour
across his shoulder, clasped a long ostrich plume into his broad
Spanish hat, and looked out his deeply-fringed Spanish gloves; and
Philip was laughing merrily, not to say rudely, at him, for trying
to deck himself out so bravely.
'See, Master Hobbs,' cried the boy in his high spirits, as he
followed his brother on deck, 'you did not know you had so fine a
gallant on board. Here be braveries for my Lady.'
'Hush, Phil,' broke in Berenger, who had hitherto taken all the
raillery in perfect good part. 'What is amiss, Master Hobbs?'
'I cannot justly say, sir,' returned Master Hobbs, without taking
his gaze off the coast, 'but by yonder banks and creeks this should
be the Sables d'Olonne; and I do not see the steeple of La
Sablerie, which has always been the landmark for the harbour of St.
Julien.'
'What do you understand by that?' asked Berenger, more struck by
his manner than his words.
'Well, sir, if I am right, a steeple that has stood three or four
hundred years does not vanish out of sight like a cloud of smoke
for nothing. I may be lightning, to be sure; or the Protestants
may have had it down for Popery; but methinks they would have too
much Christian regard for poor mariners than to knock down the only
landmark on this coast till you come to Nissard spire.'
Then he hailed the man at the mast-head, demanding if he saw the steeple of
La Sablerie. 'No, no, sir.'