And they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the ghostly
fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible but the high
stars.
Black hours passed. From minute to minute Maximilien cried
out:--"_Sucou! sucou!_" Stéphane lay motionless and dumb: his feet,
touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt singularly cold.
... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,--knocked
heavily--making a hollow loud sound. It was not Stéphane;--Stéphane
lay still as a stone: it was from the depth below. Perhaps a great fish
passing.
It came again,--twice,--shaking the canoe like a great blow. Then
Stéphane suddenly moved,--drew up his feet a little,--made as if to
speak:--"_Ou_..."; but the speech failed at his lips,--ending in a sound
like the moan of one trying to call out in sleep;--and Maximilien's
heart almost stopped beating.... Then Stéphane's limbs straightened
again; he made no more movement;--Maximilien could not even hear him
breathe.... All the sea had begun to whisper.
A breeze was rising;--Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All at once
it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,--that he did not care
what might happen. He thought about a cricket he had one day watched in
the harbor,--drifting out with the tide, on an atom of dead bark,--and
he wondered what had become of it. Then he understood that he himself
was the cricket,--still alive. But some boy had found him and pulled off
his legs. There they were,--his own legs, pressing against him: he could
still feel the aching where they had been pulled off; and they had been
dead so long they were now quite cold.... It was certainly Stéphane who
had pulled them off....
The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and over
again,--louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear. But he
heard it very well:--"_Bon-Dié, li conm vent... li ka touché nou...
nou pa save ouè li._" (But why had the Bon-Dié shaken the wind?) "_Li
pa ka tint zié_," answered the water.... _Ouille!_--He might all the
same care not to upset folks in the sea!... _Mi!_...
But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware that a
white, strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-Dié was
there,--bending over him with a lantern,--talking to him in a language
he did not understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly had eyes,--great gray
eyes that did not look wicked at all. He tried to tell the Bon-Dié how
sorry he was for what he had been saying about him;--but found he could
not utter a word. He felt great hands lift him up to the stars, and lay
him down very near them,--just under them. They burned blue-white, and
hurt his eyes like lightning:--he felt afraid of them.... About him he
heard voices,--always speaking the same language, which he could not
understand.... "_Poor little devils!--poor little devils!_" Then he
heard a bell ring; and the Bon-Dié made him swallow something nice and
warm;--and everything became black again. The stars went out!...
... Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the great
steamer _Rio de Janeiro_, and dead Stéphane beside him.... It was four
o'clock in the morning.
[Illustration]