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 Laches 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 Carre 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 Carre.

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.