I, too, at midnight, when my watch was over and I had seen Yves descend,
returned to my room to try to sleep. After all, the fate of the ship
concerned us now no longer, me no more than them. We had done our spell
of watching and of work. We might sleep now with that absolute freedom
from care which one has at sea when the hours of duty are finished.
In my own room, which was on the bridge, there was no lack of air--on
the contrary. Through the broken panes the wind and the furious rain
entered freely: the curtains twisted themselves into spirals and mounted
to the ceiling with the sound of wings.
Like Yves, I hung up my wet clothes. The water streamed down my chest.
Although my little bed could scarcely be said to be comfortable I fell
quickly asleep nevertheless, worn out by fatigue. Rolled, shaken, half
thrown out of bed, I felt myself swung from right and from left, and my
head bumped against the wood, painfully. I was conscious of all this in
my sleep, but I slept on. I slept on and dreamt of Yves. Seeing him fall
during the day had left me with a kind of uneasiness, as if some
sinister thing had brushed against me in passing.
I dreamt I was lying in a hammock, as formerly during my first years at
sea. Yves' hammock was near mine. We were swinging violently and his
became unhooked. Beneath us there was a confused movement of something
dark which it seemed to me was deep water, and he, Yves, was about to
fall into it. I stretched out my hands to save him, but they seemed to
have no strength, they were nerveless as in dreams. I tried then to
seize him round the body, to knot my hands about his chest, remembering
that his mother had entrusted him to me; and I realized with anguish
that I could not do it, that I was no longer capable of it; he was going
to slip from me and to disappear in all this moving blackness which
roared beneath us. . . . And then, what struck me with a horror of fear,
was that he did not waken and he was icy cold, with a cold which
penetrated me also, to the marrow of my bones; and the canvas of his
hammock had become rigid like the sheath of a mummy. . . .
And I felt in my head the real concussions, the real pain of all these
shocks, I mixed the real with the imaginary of my dream, as happens in
conditions of extreme fatigue, and on this account the sinister vision
assumed all the more intensity and life.
Afterwards, I lost consciousness of everything, even of the movement and
noise, and then only did my rest begin.
When I awoke it was morning. The first light was of that yellow colour
which is peculiar to the sunrise on days of tempest; and the roaring of
the wind persisted still.
Yves came and opened my door a little and looked in. He propped himself
in the doorway, holding on by one hand, bending his body now this way
and now that, according to the needs of the moment, in order to preserve
his equilibrium. He had put on again his damp clothes, and was covered
with sea salt which was deposited in his hair, in his beard, in the form
of a white powder.
He smiled, looking very calm and good-humoured.
"I wanted to see you," he said, "for I dreamt about you a lot in the
night. All night long I saw those good Burmese ladies with their long
golden nails, you know. They surrounded you with their evil monkeyings,
and I could not drive them away. At last they wanted to eat you.
Fortunately the réveillé sounded then; I was in a cold sweat when I
awoke."
"And I, too, am very glad to see you, my dear Yves, for I have dreamt a
lot about you also. Is it as rough as yesterday?"
"Perhaps a little more manageable. And, anyhow, it's day. As long as
it's light, you know, it's always easier to work at the masthead. But
when it's as black as the devil's pit, as last night, I don't like it at
all."
Yves glanced with satisfaction all round my room, arranged by him in
anticipation of bad weather. Nothing had budged, thanks to his
contrivance. On the floor there was indeed a pool of salt water in which
divers things floated; but the objects to which I attached more or less
value had remained suspended or fixed, like furniture, to the panels of
the walls by bolts or angle-irons. Everything had been corded, tied,
secured with an extreme care by means of tarred rope of various
thicknesses. Arms and bronzes had been wrapped in articles of clothing
in a strange higgledly-piggledly. Japanese masks with long human hair
gazed at us through a network of tarred thread; they had the same remote
smile, the same tilting of the eyes as the golden-nailed Burmese women
who, in Yves' dream, had wanted to eat me. . . .
A bugle-call suddenly, brisk and joyful: the summons to "wash deck!"
The bugle sounded a little thin, a little silvery, in the formidable
bellowing of the wind.
To wash the deck when the seas were breaking over it might seem a
somewhat senseless operation to people who live on land. But we found
nothing very extraordinary in it; it was done every morning, without
fail and in all circumstances; it is one of the primordial rules of life
at sea. And Yves left me saying, as if it was the most natural thing in
the world:
"I must be off to my washing station."
Nevertheless the bugle had sinned by excess of zeal, and sounded without
order, at its usual hour; for this morning the deck was not to be
washed.
One felt that things were more manageable, as Yves had said; the
movements were longer, more regular, more like the rollings of the
swell. The sea was less angry, and the deep, heavy-sounding concussions
were less frequent.
And then it was day--a vile day, it is true, with a strange livid
yellowness, but day nevertheless, less sinister than the night.
Our hour, it seemed, had not yet come, for on the second day following
we ran into calm water, in a port in China, at Hong Kong.