_May_, 1882.
In the evening, in the southern solitudes. The wind was rising. Over all
this moving immensity in which the _Primauguet_ dwelt long dark blue
waves were chasing one another. It was a damp wind and struck chill.
Below on the spar-deck, Le Hir the idiot was hastening, before darkness
fell, to sew up a corpse in pieces of grey canvas which were the remains
of sails.
Yves and Barrada, standing, were watching him with a kind of horror.
They had perforce to remain close to him, in a very small mortuary
chamber, which had been made by suspending other sails and which was
guarded by a gunner, cutlass in hand.
It was Barazère who was being sewn up in these grey remnants. He had
died of a disease contracted long before in Algiers--on a night of
pleasure. . . . Many times he had believed himself cured; but the deadly
poison remained in his blood, reappeared from time to time, and at last
had killed him. Towards the end he had been covered with hideous sores
and his friends had avoided him.
It fell to Le Hir to sew him up, for all the others had refused, out of
fear of his malady. Le Hir had accepted on the strength of a promise of
a pint of wine.
The rolling of the ship worried him, hampered him in his work, kept
shifting the corpse out of position; and he was eager to be done and to
get the wine that was waiting for him.
First, the feet; he had been told to bind them tight on account of the
cannon-ball which is attached to the dead body to make it sink. Then the
legs; and presently the body was entirely hidden, enveloped in many
thicknesses of coarse canvas; only the pale face was now visible,
tranquil in death, and looking strangely handsome with a peaceful smile.
And then roughly, with a brutal indifference, Le Hir drew over it an end
of the grey canvas and the face was veiled for ever.
In a French village the old parents of this Barazère were looking
forward to the day of his return.
When the job was done Yves and Barrada came out of the mortuary chamber
pushing Le Hir before them by the shoulders, to see that he washed his
hands before he drank his wine.
They had been exchanging ideas about death apparently, for Barrada, as
he came out, said in his Bordeaux accent:
"Ah! Nonsense! It is with men as with beasts; others will come, but
those who die . . ."
And he finished by laughing that curious laugh of his, which sounded
deep and hollow like a roar.
From his lips, there was nothing impious in the phrase; it was simply
that he knew nothing better to say.
They were both, as a matter of fact, much moved; they grieved for
Barazère. Now, the malady which had caused them fear was covered up,
forgotten; in their memory, the dead man had emerged from that final
impurity and become suddenly ennobled; they saw him again as in the time
of his strength, and in thinking of him they were moved to pity.