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Updated: June 14, 2025
But if smuggling flourished once, it had fallen on evil days, and its secrets had been hidden from his childhood. Also about that time the pilotage had decayed in competition with the licensed pilots on St. Ann's, and but a few hovelling jobs in and about Cromwell's Sound fell to the share of the men of Saaron.
He did so with a slight wave of the hand. "You wish to ask me a favour?" "I do. I came to plead with you; to say a word on behalf of Eli Tregarthen, your tenant on Saaron Island." The Lord Proprietor started. "Are you at the bottom of that also?" he asked, angrily. Vashti's eyes opened wide in astonishment. "I beg your pardon?" she murmured. "I do not understand."
He only knew that the poorer families almost of a sudden drifted away from Saaron, that he and his father and mother were left alone on the island, that his father had begun to busy himself with farming and required his help, and that in consequence he was released from lessons. His mother, a farmer's daughter from Holy Vale in St.
Vashti had remarked that the days deadened him while they should have been nerving him to action; and Vashti, this very morning, had forced his eyes open by asking, in a business-like way, if he had ever thought of emigrating to the mainland. Were it not wiser, since the wrench must come, to make it complete? to go where regret would not be kept aching by the daily sight of Saaron?
"Miss Vashti" the Commandant spoke seriously, still with his arm stretched out ready to grip her by the skirt if she should over-balance herself or the treacherous wall give way "I am glad, for your sister's sake, you have come; but I must warn you that all is not right on Saaron Island." She turned slowly, and looked down upon him there from her altitude.
I'll wage 'tis to fetch your children back from school." "Partly," assented Eli. "Iss; partly, that, an' to listen here to their voices soundin' so pretty across the wall. And partly, I reckon, 'tis on the chance to get speech with the Lord Proprietor and persuade 'em to let you bide on Saaron. But that you'll never do. Mind, I'm not sayin' a word against th' old curmudgeon.
He put the letter aside and walked out, to take his afternoon stroll around the fortifications and steady his nerves. By the Keg of Butter Battery he halted for a long look across the Sound and towards Saaron. Unconsciously for a week past, he had fallen into a habit of halting just here and letting his eyes travel towards Saaron.
"We will sail them home and land them on Saaron." The Commandant backed his boat skilfully into the passage between the walls of rock, lifted the two younger ones on board, and then stretched out a hand to the other shore to help Vashti and Annet. When all were stowed, he pushed out for an offing, and hoisted his small lug-sail, while Vashti took the tiller. The breeze blew off the shore.
He talked with great good humour, too, although Eli gave it small encouragement. The shadow of leaving Saaron had hung over Eli's mind for more than two months; heavy, oppressive, but until this morning intangible as a cloud.
The same rocks, the same bracken, the same hum of the tides; the same flowers; the same blue here, below us, the same outline of a spear-head there, beyond St. Ann's, where the tide forces through the slack water; the same streak of yellow yonder on the south cliffs of Saaron.... Our grievance is more personal, more real ... and so should yours be, if you could only see it.
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