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Updated: June 5, 2025
Dolly Venn was already there, and Seth Barker, lying on the stones and panting like a great dog. Old Clair-de-Lune alone was fresh and ready, and able in his broken English to tell us what he wished. "Messieurs," he said, "speak not long but go down. I myself am shipmate too. Ah, messieurs, you do wise to follow me. Down there no dog bark. I show you the ladder, and all be well.
At six o'clock. I cannot sleep and I have come to keep watch on the rock. Old Clair-de-Lune is with me, but silence is in the house below, where some sleep and some are seeking sleep. Of all who can discuss our future bravely, none speaks better sense than this simple old man; and if he rebukes my own confidence he rebukes it justly. I ask him when the sleep-time will pass and the sun-time come.
"Not a kick to-day among the lot of them, by Jericho! But you cannot give them water, captain," he goes on, "for you've little to give." Clair-de-Lune, thinking deeper, was, nevertheless, for a stem refusal. "Keep them off, captain, that's my advice," says he. "They very desperate, dangerous men. They drink water, then cut throat. Make ear deaf and say cistern all empty.
Night and morning Clair-de-Lune and the little girls found their way up to us with bread and meat and the news that was passing. It was on the fifth thy that they came no more, and I, at least, knew that they would never come again. "Lads," I said, "one of two things has happened. Either they've been watched and followed, or the time of which they made mention has come.
Clair-de-Lune answered me old Clair-de-Lune, standing in a blaze of light; for they had switched on the lamps below, and the vein of the reef stood out suddenly like some silver monster breathing on the surface of the sea. Clair-de-Lune answered me, I say, and his words were the most terrible I had heard since first I came to Ken's Island. "The water is in!" he cried, "the water is in the house!"
And no wonder no wonder our hearts beat high and our hands were unsteady, for beyond the basin we should find the sea, and the view might show us life or death. Old Clair-de-Lune was the first to be up, but I was close upon his heels, and Dolly Venn not far behind me.
We'd scarcely finished our meal when there was the sound of a gunshot far down in the valley, and, old Clair-de-Lune jumping up at the report, we were all on our feet in an instant to speak of the danger. "Halloa, popguns," cries Peter Bligh, in his Irish way; "what for now would any man be firing popguns at this time of the morning?"
You may not believe it, captain, but I'm quite sure of what I say, and if Clair-de-Lune does not come to-night, I ask you to go down the hillside with me and to see for yourself."
Edmond, I believe, has moments when he tries to persuade himself that he is a good man. They are dangerous moments, if all a man's better instincts are dead and forgotten. May 11th. Clair-de-Lune, Edmond tells me, has been sent to the lower reef. I do not ask him why. It was he who helped my friends in the hills. Is it all real or did I dream it?
To-morrow you speak your ship go home. For me, never again I die here with the children, messieurs; none shall come for old Clair-de-Lune, none, never at no time but you, you I save for the shipmates' sake " It was odd talk, but no time to argue about it. I saw a ladder thrust up out of the pit, and when the old man went down I followed without hesitation.
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