It was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws, its oaths, its formulae. The Comprachicos, like the Gipsies, had appointed places for periodical meetings. From time to time their leaders conferred together. In the seventeenth century they had four principal points of rendezvous: one in Spain, one in Germany, one in France, one in England.
The laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in England. A tramp was a possible public enemy. “Where do you live? How do you get your living?” And if someone could not answer, harsh penalties awaited him.
But the Comprachicos, we insist, had nothing in common with the gipsies. The gipsies were a nation; the Comprachicos were a compound of all nations. The gipsies were a tribe; the Comprachicos a freemasonry – a masonry having not a noble aim, but a hideous handicraft. Finally, the gipsies were Pagans, the Comprachicos were Christians, and more than that, good Christians. They were more than Christians, they were Catholics; they were more than Catholics, they were Romans.
PORTLAND BILL
An obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over the mainland of Europe, and yet more roughly over England, during all the month of December, 1689, and all the month of January, 1690. One evening, towards the close of one of the most bitter days of the month of January, 1690, something unusual was going on in one of the numerous inhospitable bights of the bay of Portland.
In this creek, the most dangerous of all, a little vessel, almost touching the cliff, was moored to a point of rock. The sun had just set. With no wind from the sea, the water of the creek was calm.
The twisting of the pathway could be distinguished vaguely in the relief of the cliff. The pathway of this creek terminated on the platform where the plank was placed. The passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creek must have come by this path.
Excepting the movement of embarkation, a movement visibly scared and uneasy, all around was solitude; no step, no noise, no breath was heard. The people who were going to sail away in the boat formed a busy and confused group, in rapid movement on the shore. To distinguish one from another was difficult; impossible to tell whether they were old or young. The indistinctness of evening intermixed and blurred them; the mask of shadow was over their faces. There were eight of them, and there were among them one or two women, hard to recognize under the rags and tatters in which the group was attired.
A smaller shadow, flitting to and fro among the larger ones, indicated either a dwarf or a child.
It was a child.
LEFT ALONE
All wore long cloaks, torn and patched. They moved with ease under these cloaks. One of the men in the group embarking was a chief. He had sandals on his feet, and was bedizened with gold lace tatters and a tinsel waistcoat.
The crew of the boat was composed of a captain and two sailors. The boat had apparently come from Spain, and was about to return thither. The persons embarking in it whispered among themselves. The whispering was composed – now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. They appeared to be of all nations, and yet of the same band. The crew was probably of their brotherhood.
Amid the confusion of departure there were thrown down in disorder, at the foot of the cliff, the goods which the voyagers wanted to take with them. Bags of biscuit, a cask of stock fish, a case of portable soup, three barrels – one of fresh water, one of malt, one of tar – four or five bottles of ale, an old portmanteau buckled up by straps, trunks, boxes, a ball of tow for torches and signals. These ragged people had valises. They were dragging their baggage with them.
No time was lost; there was one continued passing to and fro from the shore to the vessel, and from the vessel to the shore; each one took his share of the work – one carried a bag, another a chest. Also, they overloaded the child.
It was doubtful if the child’s father or mother were in the group. They made him work, nothing more. He appeared not a child in a family, but a slave in a tribe. No one spoke to him.
However, he wanted to embark as quickly as possible. Did he know why? Probably not: he hurried mechanically because he saw the others hurry.
The moment to put off arrived. Nothing was left to embark but the men. The two objects among the group who seemed women were already on board; six, the child among them, were still on the low platform of the cliff. A movement of departure was made in the vessel: the captain seized the helm, a sailor took up an axe to cut the hawser.
The child rushed towards the plank in order to be the first to pass. As he placed his foot on it, two of the men hurried by, got in before him, and passed on. The fourth drove him back with his fist and followed the third. The fifth, who was the chief, bounded into rather than entered the vessel, and, as he jumped in, kicked back the plank, which fell into the sea. The vessel left the shore, and the child remained on land.
ALONE
The child remained motionless on the rock – no calling out, no appeal. He spoke not a word. The same silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men – no farewell from the men to the child. The child watched the departing bark. It seemed as if he realized his position. What did he realize? Darkness.
A moment later the boat gained the crook and entered it. Then it was seen no more – all was over – the dark had gained the sea.
The child watched its disappearance – he was astounded. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. He yielded. There was no complaint – the irreproachable does not reproach.
He forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet – the tide was flowing; a gust passed through his hair – the north wind was rising. He shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the shudder of awakening. He cast his eyes about him. He was alone. Those men had just gone away. And those men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.
He could not say who they were. His childhood passed among them. He was in juxtaposition to them, nothing more. He had just been forgotten by them.
He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket. It was winter – it was night. It will be necessary to walk. He did not know where he was. He knew nothing. He was ten years old. The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw the night and depths where he heard the waves.
He stretched his little thin arms and yawned. Then suddenly with the agility of a squirrel, or perhaps of an acrobat he turned his back on the creek, and began to climb up the cliff. To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an animal – he did both.
The intensity of cold had, however, frozen the snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. His man’s jacket, which was too big for him, got in his way[12]. Now and then he came upon a little ice. Once he came on a vein of slate, which suddenly gave way under him.
Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a roof. He rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of grass saved him. Finally he jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he rose from the precipice.
Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. The bitter north-wester[13] was blowing; he tightened his rough sailor’s jacket about his chest.
The child gained the tableland, stopped, placed his feet firmly on the frozen ground, and looked about him. Behind him was the sea; in front the land; above, the sky – but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked the zenith.
Far away the waters stirred confusedly in the ominous clear-obscure of immensity. The boat was going quick away. It seemed to grow smaller every minute. Nothing