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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 CHAPTER IX
A STAR ON THE SEA

The island had passed away, painted out by distance; the sky
above the horizon, paled by the indigo of the sea, lay like a ring of
sparkling emerald; to southward, where the emerald passed into the
living burning sapphire of the sky, lay a line of white clouds, swan-
white and like a flock of flying swans, darkening with their
suggestion of snow the blueness of the water, deepening with their
remoteness the distance.
The warm wind blew steadily sparkling up the blue, the
incredible blue of the sea; the scull-blades, immersed half a foot in
the water, were tinted with azure, the floating scraps of seaweed
were tinted with indigo; a man floating a yard deep would have
shewn like a form of lazulite.
Gaspard had drawn in his sculls; free of the island now, what
use was there in rowing? He had no idea of direction, North, South,
East or West. His only chance, so he told himself, lay in his sighting
a ship. He was in the hands of chance and he did not feel afraid. Not
only that, but he felt in his mind a certainty that before long he
would be rescued.
The relief of his escape from the island may have had something
to do with this intuitive optimism, and the fact that he had provisions
and water enough to last him for days. Loneliness had vanished; he
had left her behind on the island, she and Yves.
 It seemed like a bad dream, all that, and Yves was the worst
part of it. He felt neither sorrow nor compunction for what had
happened. Why should he? He had not meant to kill, and if he had
meant to kill, would he not have been justified? He felt nothing of
remorse, nothing of that pity for the dead man which had come to
him yesterday, when, standing by the reefs on the eastward of the
island, he had looked at the heap of raffle he had salved. He had
suffered too much since then to have any sentimental feelings on
the matter. Haunted and bedevilled, he had escaped with his reason
more by luck than anything else.
He dressed himself and then he sat, rocked by the swell,
drifting, the sun rising higher towards the zenith, the wind blowing
steadily out of the southeast, warm as a woman’s breath. Every now
and then a flying-fish like a silver arrowhead would leave the sea,
flash through the air, and vanish.
Towards noon a shoal of them chased by some enemy broke the
water to starboard; one passed right over the boat, soundless in
flight, swift, brilliant against the blue, with staring sightless eyes; a
phantom from the deep pursued by a phantom, definite for a
moment and hard to the sight as a jewel, gone like a ghost the
moment after, made one again with the blue sea.
The wind tempered the heat of the sun, long strips of seaweed
floated past lazily, and a turtle that had been sunning itself basking
on the water’s surface, slipped away and vanished as the boat drew
near. A great gull came along drifting on the wind, passed with the
silence of a moving cloud and dwindled to nothingness in the blue to
northward.
Nothing in the world of water and sky seemed to move with
effort, a profound languor filled it all from the depths below to the
heights above, from the little boat whispering and chuckling on the
ripples to the distances of the horizon; distances that shewed
nothing, told of nothing but summer, vagueness, and azure.
 Two hours before sunset Gaspard standing up to get a better
horizon and shading his eyes with his hand saw, away on the
eastern sea line, a bright point burning like a star.
 CHAPTER X
LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

It was a sail.
He stood with his eyes still shaded, motionless but for the
movement of the boat.
From away out there a hand seemed to have reached clutching
at his heart. The star so steadfast and so still held him by its very
stillness and steadfastness. There, where the sunlight showed that
motionless point of light were crowded decks, bending spars,
snoring sails, life, motion; a ship breasting her way through the blue
sea, heeling to the breeze.
All that was there. Here, nothing but a star marking poignantly
the vacancy of illimitable distance. The wind had freshened, it was
as though the ship had sent the joyous breath of life before her, the
breezed-up water smacked the boat merrily, and even as he looked
the star grew, lifting steadily as the mainsails joined the topsails
above the sea line.
As Gaspard watched, his confidence and assurance left him. The
blind trust in chance that had possessed him all day vanished now
that chance had shewn her hand.
At once and vividly his true position stood before him, and the
horrible chances of death that lay in it, and, so strange a thing is
mind, now and for the first time did the sense of his own wealth in
the possession of these twenty-one big pieces of gold take
possession of him. Side by side with the fear of not being rescued
stood the vision of the possibilities that lay in them. Each one
weighed as much as three twenty-franc pieces. Six hundred and
three francs; with that what might he not do! It was the only big bit
of luck that had ever fallen in his way, and it would be doubly bitter
to die with his luck in his hands.
And, still, as he watched, the sail grew. The vessel was not
nearly so far off as she appeared; for the boat gave a low horizon.
For this reason, too, she seemed bigger than she really was. That
she was heading straight for the boat he could not doubt, yet he
stood torn by the fear that she would miss him, pass him by, not
sight him.
His imaginative mind saw her passing, saw her fading away, saw
himself standing and calling after her and cursing her; so vivid was
the obsession that for a moment, as he drew the picture, blazing
wrath shot up in his heart towards her captain, curses rose to his
lips, and sweat started on his brow.
Then he wiped his face with his coat sleeve, and unable to
remain in idleness a moment longer, took the sculls and headed the
boat for the point from which the vessel was approaching.
Useless, the moment his back was turned on the sail it was gone
from his mind as from his sight. He had to keep it in view and
shifting his position with the sculls half drawn in, he sat watching.
He had not so good an horizon sitting as standing, yet the sail
had sensibly increased in size even allowing for the altered elevation.
With a dip of the sculls he kept the boat so that he was always
facing the approaching vision, and sitting thus the picture before him
resolved itself into three components: the after part of the boat,
white, clean-scoured by spray, and burning in the sun with the
exception of the space covered by his shadow; the blue of sea and
sky; the ship.
Seated, with the sculls ready to correct the boat when she
twisted to the wind and the current, his eyes passed from the boat
to the far-off ship, from the ship to the sea and sky.
And still she grew, as a child grows in the womb, as an idea in
the mind, adding member to member, significance to significance.
He could see now the fore topsail distinct from the fore course. She
was a square rigged vessel as to the fore part, but coming as she
was, the spread of fore and topsails screened her rig.
She had altered, too, in colour; the frost white star was now a
truncated pyramid of pale but brilliant rose, around which the deep
blue heart of the sky paled to emerald by contrast.
And still she grew, motionless, or seeming not to move, yet
becoming more definite, expanding as a bud expands, voiceless, and
like a vision developing in a dream.
Moment joined itself to moment, minute to minute. She might
now be ten miles away, or maybe more, her course would bring her
directly to the boat and she would sight it to a certainty if she had
light.
It was his own shadow cast by the oblique rays of the sun on
seat and bottom board and thwart that suggested the chilling clause.
The sun was little more than an hour from his setting; would he
cut the sea line before the vessel sighted the boat?
It was a race between the sun and the ship. He knew quite well
that though she was coming apparently dead on to him, the chances
were that she might pass him by a considerable distance, and, as
though the thought had cast a blight on her, for a long time she
hung, not seeming to alter in size. Then magically, she took
distinctness, mystery and beauty left her; in a short half hour she
became clearly defined, a small vessel of perhaps two hundred tons,
at a distance of perhaps five miles. She would not be doing more
than eight or nine knots.
Gaspard looked behind him at the sun. It had outraced the ship,
there were still diameters between it and the horizon, but the
western blue was just beginning to turn, to tinge with vague orange,
as though an impalpable mist of gold dust were rising from the sea.
But now the ship, as a runner strains when near the goal,
seemed straining to reach him. Moment by moment she leapt nearer,
and the old stained sails that had lost the vague rose of distance
caught now the first touch of gold from the sunset.
The eastern sky still held its blue, and against it the ship burned
like a ship of gold, and before her prow the water divided like
glittering silk cut by a golden sword.
Scarcely a mile away she leapt more triumphantly into life, she
seemed within hail; standing up and stripping off his coat Gaspard
waved it, shouting against the wind, delirious, forgetful of distance,
forgetful of the sun and then—just as though a bad wizard had
touched her she began to lose her brilliancy; she had seemed
springing towards him with golden arms outspread, triumphant, and
seeking to save him and then, just as though indifference had
suddenly seized her, she seemed to lose her speed.
He turned his head. God! the sun was gone, just a trace of fire
lingered beneath the gold of the sunset, through which, like a dark
blue wind, was stealing the night.

* * * * *
The vessel from a ship had turned to a phantom lost in a world
of violent shadow. With the passing of the sun the breeze fell away
to a gentle breathing of air. Then, in that moment of darkness and
indecision, before the stars have taken full possession of the sky,
standing up and straining his eyes he could not see the ship at all.
Ah! here she came at last, stealing along in the starlight with
sails just filling and, then, more clearly to view as ten million stars lit
the sea, turning it to frosted silver.
At four knots without a light showing, softly and seeming the
very embodiment of treachery and evasion she came. She would
pass by some five cable lengths to starboard and Gaspard, seizing
the sculls turned the boat’s head to cut her off.
As he rowed he shouted, and had anyone on board heard him
they might have fancied it, so thin and hard was his voice, the crying
of a sea gull, but from all appearances no one heard him, for not a
light shewed.
Now she bulked up enormous, a great trapezium of ebony
cutting the silver sky; he ceased rowing, shouted again, and paused
to listen. So close was she that he could hear the wash of the water
at her fore foot, the creaking of blocks and the slatting of the
scarcely filled sails.
Scarcely a cable length away and making to pass him by half
that distance she came, black as ebony, a barquentine, silent as a
phantom, stealthy as a thief. Then, as he hailed her again with a last
despairing cry, she burst into voice.
 CHAPTER XI
CAPTAIN SAGESSE

A lantern shot its light over the port quarter, a voice hailed him
from the deck:
“Hi yi ow!” shrill as a bird, and at the cry, like a shaken beehive,
the forecastle broke into life; the decks in a moment were a-swarm,
chattering like a tree full of monkeys, another lantern shewed over
the port bow, and above the lantern a face black as the face of a
devil with glittering eyeballs and white teeth grinned down on the
boat below.
Next moment something struck Gaspard across the chest, it was
a rope; seizing it he held on, and the little boat came up grinding
against the great washing wall of the vessel, carried with her on her
slow way and right beneath the broad channel of the foremast. He
seized the rope’s end to the forward seat, caught up the belt with
the pouch of gold and fastened it to his waist; then, reaching up, he
caught hold of a channelplate and with the help of another rope
flung by the chattering crowd above, swung himself on to the
channel. Next moment he was on deck.
The starlight lit the decks dimly fore and aft, he was surrounded
with negroes swarming and chattering like monkeys; a man in a
panama hat who had helped him over the side, and who,
disregarding him, was now shouting directions in shrill French to a
black man who had slipped down into the boat, seemed the only
white man on board.
 Having finished his directions he turned, kicked a negro who
stood in his way, caught up a lantern, and coming up to Gaspard
held the light to him as if he were a work of art he wished to
examine.
“French?” said the man in the panama, speaking in that
language and fixing Gaspard with a pair of beady unwinking black
eyes. His face lit up by the lantern-light was round, good-tempered
looking, the face of a bon bourgeois—yet the eyes chilled Gaspard
for a moment ere he replied:
“Yes, French, shipwrecked and floating about in that cursed boat
till you nearly ran me down.”
“What ship?”
“The Rhone of the Compagnie Transatlantique.”
“The Rhone; I have seen her in Havana harbour, is she lost
then?”
“Yes, ripped her bottom out on a reef and gone with all on
board.”
“You are the only one saved?”
“Yes.”
“Boufre!” said the other, betraying his provence in the word. “A
Moco, too, so was I till I became a man of my own. Well I have
saved you, and I take the boat! I am Captain Sagesse, and this is
my barque La Belle Arlésienne.”
He seized Gaspard by the coat lapel as he brought the words out
with emphasis.
“The boat is mine, you understand.”
“Oh the boat, she is yours and welcome.”
“She is worth five hundred francs, and a brush full of white paint
will take the Rhone’s name off her. I found you on a raft—no, on a
hencoop—no, on a spar—” he slipped his arm through Gaspard’s and
was leading him aft to the deck-house on the poop. “You were
floating on a spar. Here is the deck-house. Come in.” He opened the
deck-house door disclosing a cabin comfortably, yet roughly
furnished. A table stood in the middle, over the table hung a
swinging lamp. Two doors opening aft gave entrance to the captain
and mate’s cabins, tiny holes not much bigger than dog-kennels. The
captain flung his panama on the table and Gaspard took a seat, and
looked at his companion who was now opening a locker, and
fetching out a bottle of rum and some glasses and a basket of ship
biscuits. This roundfaced and contented looking personage had, in
the first moment of their acquaintance, invented and asked him to
assist in a microscopic felony. He placed his hand on the bag of gold
at his side as, leaning on the table, he replied:
“But, see here, that boat doesn’t belong to the Rhone at all.”
The man in the panama had placed the things on the table, he
turned.
“But you said—”
“Yes, but you have not heard all; I was wrecked from the Rhone
right enough, on a spar too, away on an island down there, then the
boat came floating along, she has no name on her that I have seen,
I got into her and rowed away—that’s all.”
“Outre,” said Sagesse, pouring out two glasses of rum, whilst
Gaspard took a biscuit. The little man almost seemed disappointed;
one might have fancied that he regretted the lost chance of “doing”
the Compagnie Transatlantique out of a boat, then he took a
Martinique cigar from his pocket, lit it, and with his elbows on the
table began to talk and ask questions.
He asked questions without waiting for an answer, nay, he
sometimes answered them himself, as—
“The Rhone, I have seen her in Havana harbour, what tonnage
was she? Oh, I know, seven thousand; she and the Roxelane were
sister ships. The Roxelane called regularly at St. Pierre. Oh, yes, I
ought to know her, Martinique bred as I am. Not born, mind you. No,
I was born at Arles, but I have spent thirty years in these seas. One
can make money in these seas, but one never can forget the old
land, and you were born at Montpellier, you say, ’tis the same thing,
and all Provençals are brothers. Think you, if I picked up a
Dutchlander or an English, or even a Ponantaise, I would be giving
him rum in my cabin—” Then mellowed by the rum and the presence
of another Provençal, he leaned his elbows further on the table and
continued talking and asking questions without seeming to hear the
answer.
 CHAPTER XII
RUM

He had done big things, had Captain Sagesse, since the day
thirty years and more ago when, deserting from a French ship, he
had taken up his abode at St. Pierre. Beginning at the very bottom,
he had worked his way up to comparative affluence, and whilst
plying Gaspard with questions he interpolated fragments of his own
history. Captain Sagesse was the only subject of very deep interest
to Captain Sagesse; had he been going to his own execution he
would have cast fragments of his history to the crowd, he was a
walking autobiography, and he had been closed for three weeks,
inasmuch as the crew consisting entirely of blacks, he had no one to
open himself to. He told of how he worked the vessel entirely with
blacks, Barbadians, and when he had exhausted his slight interest in
Gaspard and his history he returned to himself, talking as though
Gaspard were an old friend just stepped aboard, the freemasonry of
the south and a common birthplace giving him the familiarity of long
acquaintanceship. There was scarcely a disreputable transaction in
which a ship’s keel could find a place but it seemed that Captain
Sagesse and his barque, the Belle Arlésienne, had been in it—gun
running in the Spanish-American war, smuggling, and worse. He
owned the vessel, he owned property in Martinique and very
questionable property in St. Pierre; and inspired now by rum and
what seemed at first blush a charming and natural naïveté, he told
about himself and his doings, his possessions and aspirations with
characteristic force and freedom.
 Gaspard, at first half drowsy with weariness, listened like a
person in a dream to the chatter of the other, then, the rum
beginning to take effect upon him, he found himself laughing at
things which might have made him frown if listened to in strict
sobriety. He was sinner enough, but in his small way in life he had
dealt straightly with his fellows, he had, at all events, no feeling for a
scoundrel, and Captain Sagesse was scoundrel enough, heaven
knows, to judge by his conversation. He had got the better of
governments, men, and women; he gave neither names nor dates
nor places, talking in his loose way with nothing more definite than,
“It was an islet, it might have been fifty miles south or fifty miles
north of Rum Cay—but that doesn’t matter,” or “Honorine, that might
have been her name, but it wasn’t, anyhow, I’ll tell you the trick she
served Pierre Sagesse, and then I’ll tell you the trick he served her.”
All at once the brain of Gaspard, drowsed by the events of the
day, cleared, perception became acute, sensation beatified, two
glasses of strong rum and the Martinique bout which the Captain
had given him, had opened for him the door of the Brandy Paradise;
the deck-house of La Belle Arlésienne seemed palatial, Sagesse the
greatest of men and he, Gaspard Cadillac, the equal of Sagesse.
He held out his glass for more rum.
“And mark you,” said Sagesse as he poured it out, “I got my hold
on her in that way, because, mordieu, I remembered those two
words she said that night to the mate of the Bayonnaise. They
thought I was drunk, but I have never been drunk in my life, and I
never forget.”
“Nor I,” said Gaspard, “never been drunk and never forget.” The
recollection of Anisette and Yves came up in his mind, and he
thumped the table with his fist. “I have served my man out. No, I
never forget. Now you listen—” But Sagesse was off on another
tack, money business this time, and Gaspard rocking unsteadily in
his seat with his eyes injected, the cigar in the corner of his mouth,
and his fists clenched on the table before him, sat hearing nothing,
glorified in the hideous upset of alcohol, filled with the splendour of
his own importance, and tormented on his throne by something, he
knew not what, but which took the form of Yves.
It was the woman of Marseilles still working like a demon at his
heart and brought into full life by the drink. The feeling that another
man had done him out. That another man had been preferred to
him. That another man was a better animal, even though that man
was dead. Alcohol told him that he was glorious, supreme, a man
amongst men. Anisette like a pale, sneering ghost said “Pshaw.
Where is Yves. You, you are nothing to a woman.”
“And it was worth seven thousand dollars American gold coin,”
Sagesse was saying in the course of his yarn, when Gaspard,
whipping the belt and pouch from his waist, brought them down on
the table with a bang, so that the gold coins rolled out.
“Look at that,” cried Gaspard. “What you say? Wasn’t that worth
the thrust of a knife?” The coins danced before him as he sat rocking
in his seat, an abstemious man as a rule, the weariness and the
strong old rum had done their work.
Sagesse stopped short in his story, stared at the belt and the
gold and then at the man before him. Sagesse, though he chattered
of his own doings, never by any chance gave a man a handle to use
against him; his tales were as vague, all save the villainy of them, as
clouds; his one weakness was talking and he knew it and guarded
against it, the villainies he boasted of were all apocryphal; based
they were on black deeds, just as clouds are based on mountains,
the scoundrel in him had to boast, but to bring Sagesse to book on
one of his stories would be like attempting to bring a bird to earth by
grasping at its shadow on the ground.
Men had tried to blackmail this raconteur on the strength of his
statements; to bring the vulture to earth by catching at his shadow,
only to find themselves in the vulture’s clutch, blackmailed
themselves most cruelly. And he never let go as long as his clutch
held, and there was a feather on the victim. But though he chattered
fables, he knew when to be silent in face of facts. He was silent now.
He laughed but said nothing for a moment, whilst Gaspard gathering
the coins together in a heap, reiterated his question.
“What you say—isn’t that worth the thrust of a knife?—given in
fair fight, mind you, man to man, and the better man wins.” Sagesse
held out his hand, took a coin, examined it and handed it back.
“Bon Dieu, yes. So you killed him—but where did he get these
things from, they are not coins of to-day. Had he, then, been
robbing a museum?”
Gaspard nodded with drunken gravity.
“That’s it, you’ve hit it, he robbed someone of them and
wouldn’t share, it was over there on the island.”
“Aha,” said Sagesse. “So you killed him on the island, vé, but you
are a man after my own heart, the island—and the name of your
man you said was—”
“Yves.”
Gaspard exhausted, falling into the third stage of intoxication,
was leaning now over the table, his eyelids drooping, the cigar end,
no longer alight, held loosely in his nerveless fingers.
“Yves—and what rating was he?”
“Stoker.”
“So—but he had another name, he was not only called Yves?”
“What you say?” asked Gaspard, rousing slightly.
Sagesse repeated his question, but the man at the table did not
seem to comprehend, then, stricken with sleep he sank completely
forward, his head resting right cheek down on the table, his right
hand on the pouch containing the money. Sagesse looked at him for
a moment contemplatively, then he went to the door and cried,
“Jules.” A shuffling sound came along the deck, and a big negro,
bare-footed and bare-breasted, with his wool all tied up in little
knots, made his appearance at the door.
 Sagesse pointed to the man at the table, and Jules with a broad
grin but without a word, entered and took the dreamer by the
shoulders, Sagesse took him by the feet, and between them they
carried him to the starboard dog hole, which did duty for a mate’s
cabin when a mate was on board. Here they put him in the bunk,
Sagesse placed the belt and pouch of money in the bunk beside him,
then they closed the door on him and left him to his slumbers.
When Sagesse found himself alone, he took a chart from a
locker, spread it on the table and pored over it.
Gaspard had told him that he had only been drifting since
morning. If this were so, if the man were not lying, and if, indeed,
he had left an island that morning, then the only island he possibly
could have left was here marked on the chart, a tiny island reef
beset to North, South, and East; eighty miles or so southeast of
Turks Island.
Sagesse knew the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic that includes
the Bahamas as well, almost, as he knew the heart of the lower
order of mankind. He knew from his own knowledge, and leaving
the chart aside, that there was only one islet about here from which
a boat could drift or be rowed in the course of a day to the point
where he had picked up his new acquaintance. He knew the island
by sight, too, the clump of seven palm trees, the white sandy beach,
and the murderous reefs. He had seen it through the glass several
times, in past years. He had counted the palms, seven of them. He
never forgot anything; that was partly why from a foremast hand in
the French mercantile marine, he had risen to wealth and eminence
of a sort. He fetched a pen and inkhorn from the locker, and made
just over the islet the form of a tiny cross, then he put the chart, pen
and ink back in their places and came on deck.
The moon had risen, still a crescent but strong enough to flood
the sea with light. Jules had relieved the man at the wheel, and
stood a dusky ghost before the yellow binnacle light, the wind still
held and had even strengthened a little, and in the silence of the
night the click of the rudder chain, the wash of the water at the
bow, and the occasional groan of hemp-rope and block could be
heard.
The barquentine seemed talking to herself in an undertone. Old
and weary of the sea, dressed in canvas, patched and stained and
ill-fitting, barnacled and streaming southern weeds from her copper,
she went her way across the moonlit water, steering now, to make
the passage between Haiti and Porto Rico; a hag of the ocean
groping her way from port to port, now on honest business, now on
contraband, from Yucatan to Port of Spain.
 CHAPTER XIII
LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE

At about six o’clock the next morning Gaspard awoke from sleep,
half stifled by the close air of the little cabin where Sagesse had
placed him. The taste of the rum was still in his mouth, and at a
stroke, and almost at the return of consciousness, the doings of the
past night rose before him—up to a certain point. He remembered
the conversation of Sagesse, he remembered taking the belt from
his waist and flinging it and the pouch of money on the table, but
beyond that point he remembered nothing.
He put his hand to his waist, belt and bag were gone. He put his
legs out of the bunk, and was just in the act of getting on his feet
when his hand rested on something hard, it was the pouch. It had
not been tampered with, he could tell that by the feel, but, to make
sure, he opened it and counted the gold pieces by the dim light
which shone through the scuttle overhead.
Yes, the twenty-one pieces of gold were there, solid, bright and
hard. He put the belt round his waist and buttoning his coat over the
pouch came on deck.
La Belle Arlésienne, close hauled under all sail, was making a full
eight knots steering S. S. E. with the coast of Haiti a line on the
southern horizon. She had altered her course in the night and she
lay now with the shoals and reefs south of Turks Island on her port
quarter, but nothing of them shewed, for the sea over that way
under the newborn sun lay like a blazing gem, a sheet of corrugated
crystal, each of whose million, million facets was a mirror; then,
round from there to where the bowsprit was poking at the sky above
the sea line went the sea, without sail or sign of life deepening in
blueness to where the far-off Haitian coast lay hyacinth coloured in
the morning.
Gaspard looked around him, he could see no sign of Sagesse; a
negro dressed in a pair of canvas trousers held by a single
suspender, stood at the wheel, several more were grouped round the
fo’csle-head engaged on some business, and a thin streak of smoke
from the caboose told of breakfast in progress.
From where he stood the deck stretched away unencumbered by
cargo, and barred by the shadows of the standing rigging; they had
taken the boat on board, and she was lying bottom up on the deck
forward of the mainmast.
Despite her age, despite the decks so yellow stained by time
that plank and dowel were of the same colour and indistinguishable,
despite the sails all cut and patched, the old barquentine had still a
look of buoyancy and life caught from the brave morning light and
the flooding azure of sea and sky.
The smell of tar and bilge and rope, the groan of rubber and
creak of mast brought up for Gaspard the vision of the Tamalpais
and his early youth. No other sensation is at all like the feel of a
sailing ship beneath one’s feet. The steamer is a dead weight driven
by an alien force, its progression is a continual insult to the wind and
the sea, but the sailing ship is one with the sea and the wind, her
motion is fluent, fresh, and part of the eternal movement of nature.
As Gaspard stood with his eyes fixed on the distant Haitian coast,
Sagesse came out of the deck-house and gave him good-morning.
The Captain had a telescope in his hand, and ranging himself
beside Gaspard he began to examine the coast-line attentively
through the glass.
Not a word did he say of the proceedings of the past night. He
stood picking out the points and headlands of the coast, remarking
on them now and then, and now and then throwing in some piece of
reminiscence, as “Over there—you can just see that bluish spot, it
goes in deep, the land there—that’s where a big English ship went
on the rocks. The Severn in the storm of ’82. I helped in the salving.
Ma foi, I have never seen such a big ship with her back so broken.
She was opened out like a band-box. She was filled with millinery,
too. New York fashions for Jamaica; the rocks were dressed in
chiffon, it was like the wreck of the Bon Marché, and the negresses
came down to help—you can fancy!” or “That point, you can just see
it with the eye to eastward of the blue spot, over there they hanged
the last of the pirates, Freemantle—”
“What does he know, what did I say last night. I remember
flinging the money on the table, I remember saying something about
Yves—but what? Did I say much, did I say little? And the money, he
must have picked it up and put it in the pouch, and put the pouch
and belt beside me as I lay in the bunk, hog that I was—mordieu—
what did I say?” These thoughts were running through Gaspard’s
mind as he stood watching his companion and listening to his
remarks almost without comprehending them.
But Sagesse, whatever he knew, shewed nothing of his
knowledge. He chatted familiarly and easily, and when breakfast was
brought aft by Jules they sat down to it, and over the steaming
coffee and fried bacon and bananas, the Captain continued his
easygoing discourse, chatting on everything and nothing, but always
with interest.
The blackguardly edge had gone off his conversation, it was only
at night it appeared whetted by alcohol, for Sagesse was a
methodical drinker, never glancing at the bottle till the absinthe hour.
Gaspard during the meal made an offer of work, but Sagesse
would not hear of it.
“You are a brother Provençal, well, I have picked you up floating
about on the sea and that’s all about it, I have more than enough
hands to work the ship, and your food, what does it cost? Besides,
we can settle up at St. Pierre. St. Pierre, Martinique, yes that is my
port. You have never been there? Ah, mordieu, then you have never
seen life, you will see it at St. Pierre where men know how to laugh,
and love is as cheap as bananas.”
“Well, I will be able to pay you,” said Gaspard, “that is to say if I
ever can pay you for all you have done for me.”
Sagesse laughed.
His face, ordinarily pleasant except for a certain fixity of the
eyes, lost its pleasantness in some strange way when he laughed.
Clean shaved, except for a rather heavy and drooping
moustache, fat and weather-tanned, in white cap and apron, save
for his bronzing he would have made an ideal chef; a concocter of
sauces and entremets, fat with the steam of his kitchen; but when
he laughed he shewed his teeth and just that one touch destroyed
his bonhommie, for his laughter did not extend above his mouth,
and laughter is inhuman when the eyes do not correct the teeth.
All day they kept the Haitian coast on the distant horizon, the
water had been blue off the island, but to Gaspard, as he hung over
the side, it seemed that this water was even bluer. It was; the
Caribbean, that great lake of burning indigo, was sending its colour
to meet them, the foam flakes from the fore-foot of the Belle
Arlésienne swept past like marble shavings cast on slabs of lapis-
lazuli, and violets would have seemed pale and faded held against
the background of the sea to southward.
 CHAPTER XIV
THE MONEY-CHANGER

Gaspard, though a man full-grown and a man, moreover, who

had passed his life in touch with the brutal side of things, had still in
his nature very much of the child. The Provençal rarely grows old, he
withers at last in the sun and comes to die, but the child in him
remains a child; imaginative, impulsive, easily moved to laughter or
tears, good or naughty, with a passion for colour, and movement,
and sound, and exaggeration. And so he remains a poet in his way.
Go all over the earth, and you will find man imitating the insect
in this particular, that he is the colour of the leaf he was born on.
Gaspard was the colour of Provence, and all the coal-dust of the
stokehold, the sordidness of the life had not altered his essential
colour; the something tragic, something gay, something vivacious,
something lazy which is part of the southern land of black shadows,
white roads, blue skies, keen mistral, and poignantly scented flowers
still clung to his personality.
Even Sagesse shewed something of a trace of this in the
exaggeration of his own doings, in his vivacity, and in the flower
which he carried in his button-hole when ashore.
But there was little of the child about Sagesse and much of the
master. As day followed day, and the working of the vessel shewed
itself more and more to Gaspard, astonishment filled him at the
extraordinary discipline amidst the hands, and the way Sagesse
worked them. When he was out of sight they would shout and
chatter amongst themselves, but the instant he appeared silence
took the deck as it takes a grove of chattering birds when a hawk
appears in the sky overhead. Orders were executed at a run, yet he
never swore or raised his voice louder than was necessary;
occasionally when a man got in the way, as on the night of
Gaspard’s boarding the vessel, he would give him a kick just as a
master might kick a dog, but beyond that his rule seemed kindly.
They were all Barbadians, these blacks, and English-speaking, with
the exception of Jules who was Haitian born, but Sagesse could talk
to them fluently in their own language. He could talk four languages,
French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese; he had picked the three
foreign languages up as a means to trade, and it was to his mastery
of them, as much as his own astuteness, that he owed his success in
life.
One night, sultry and cloudless with the sea like frosted silver
under the starlight and the warm breathing of the wind, Gaspard,
going into the deck-house found Sagesse seated at the table before
a chart.
“If this wind holds,” said Sagesse, “we should sight Martinique at
dawn.” He spoke with his eyes upon the chart, then, looking up:
“What do you propose to do when you get there?”
“Oh, as for me I don’t know,” said Gaspard taking a seat
opposite the other. “Report myself to the Compagnie Transatlantique
—draw what pay is owing to me, and try and get recompense for my
kit.”
“Well,” said Sagesse, “if I were in your place, I would let all that
slip.”
“How?”
“Ma foi, how?—say nothing, or as little as you can, report
yourself, but do not trouble about compensation.”
“And why?”
 Sagesse laughed, “Because my friend, it is not well to stir muddy
water; you get before one of these infernal clerks with a pen in his
hand, and he takes notes of what you say, you ask for compensation
and he says, ‘Yes, yes, that is just, compensation, certainly, but first
my friend, prove yourself to be whom you say you are, and give us
your story in detail.’ Then with the point of his pen he turns you
inside out and,” said Sagesse tapping on the table with his thumb, “it
is not well to be turned inside out if one has anything to conceal.”
“To conceal?”
“For instance,” went on Sagesse, “the official of the Compagnie
Transatlantique might say, ‘Who was your engineer-in-chief, who was
your second engineer, had you a chum, what was his name?’”.
Sagesse watching Gaspard narrowly saw the sweat start on his
forehead, laughed, and finished, “and you would not say, ‘His name
is Yves, he escaped with me, we landed on an island, he had a belt
about his waist and a pouch containing a number of valuable gold
coins which he had stolen, and I killed him and took the money.’ You
would not say that, perhaps, with your tongue, but your face might
give a hint, or your manner, and a hint might lead to a suspicion,
and a suspicion to a search—you should have burned that body.”
Gaspard, staring at the man before him, felt as though an ice-
cold blade had been driven through his heart, his flesh crawled. He
had told all, then, to this man, and more than all. He felt nothing of
what the criminal feels whose crime has been discovered, for he felt
himself innocent of crime or criminal intent. It was the horror of the
fact that he had given himself away, and under the influence of drink
had described the affair in such a manner that Sagesse believed him
a murderer—this it was that paralysed him for the moment.
For a moment only, then, thrusting his hands out as though he
were putting something away from him, he burst out, “I did not kill
him for money—it’s a lie. If I said so I lied—it was an accident. True,
we quarrelled about the money, but I did not kill him for it. The knife
only scratched him and he dropped. I had saved his life; does a man
murder another whose life he has saved? When I spoke, I was mad
with your cursed drink. If I had murdered him would I have told of
it? I did not kill him for money—do you believe me?”
“My friend,” replied Sagesse quite unmoved, “I believe you. But
you yourself admit the fact that you killed him.”
“Yes, by accident.”
“And took his money?”
“It did not belong to him. He had only just found it amidst the
bushes, the belt and the pouch. Why do you shake your head, do
you not believe me?”
“Whether I believe you or not, does it matter—? This man had
found money, you killed him—by accident, with a knife, and took his
money. Does your reason not tell you that such a tale is enough to
hang the Archbishop of Paris—but it is all your affair, and as I said
just now, my advice is to let the thing lie. Do not disturb dead
bones. Let us forget it, and be practical. If I chose, I could hand you
over to the authorities at Martinique to-morrow. I have marked on
the chart the position where you boarded me, and the position of
that island, which is the only one in that vicinity. But it would not be
of the least profit to me to get you into trouble. Not in the least. I
would much sooner help you. Well, to business. That money will be
your worst friend, instead of your best if you try to use it ashore as
it is, you must change it for good American dollars. Put it on the
table and I will change it for you.”
“Before God,” burst out Gaspard, “I will do nothing unless you
believe me when I say that I came by it rightly, that there is no stain
of blood on it, that what happened there on the island was an
accident, and that I am no murderer!”
Sagesse, who knew man thoroughly, and who ever since the first
morning of their acquaintance had been studying him minutely, rose
to his feet and slapped his right hand down on the table palm
uppermost.
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