"There's no foppery in a sailor who has washed his skin in the waters of
five or six oceans."
On the following morning, when the sun rose, the wind was still fresh.
The _Primauguet_ was moving very quickly, rocking in its course with the
supple and vigorous movement of a mighty runner. In the bow the men
released from the watch were singing as they made their morning toilet,
stripped, resembling, with their muscular arms and shoulders, the
statues of ancient Greece; they were washing themselves liberally in
cold water; they plunged their head and shoulders into tubs, covered
their chests with a white foam of soap and then, turn and turn about,
rubbed one another down.
Suddenly they remembered the dead man and their blythe song subsided.
For they had just seen the men of the other watch assembling at the
order of their officer and lining up in the stern, as if for an
inspection. They guessed why and drew near.
A long new plank had been placed crosswise on the nettings, overhanging,
making a kind of see-saw over the water, and a sinister thing which
seemed very heavy, a sheath of grey canvas which betrayed a human form,
had just been brought up from below.
When Barazère was laid on the long new plank, suspended in mid air over
the foaming waves, the bonnets of the sailors were all removed in a last
salute; a signalman recited a prayer, hands made the sign of the
cross--and then, at my command, the plank was tilted and there came the
dull sound of a heavy thing plunging into the water.
The _Primauguet_ passed on its way, and the body of Barazère sank into
the abyss, immense in depth and extent, of the great ocean.
Then, very softly, as a reproach, I repeated to Yves who was near me,
the phrase of the night before:
"It is with men as with beasts: more will come, but . . ."
"Oh!" he replied; "it was not I who said that; it was he." (_He_--that
is to say, Barrada--heard him and turned his head towards us. There were
tears in his eyes.)
We looked behind us with uneasiness, at the wake; for it happens
sometimes, when the following shark is there, that a stain of blood
appears on the surface of the sea.
But no, there was nothing; he had descended in peace into the depths
below.
An infinite descent, first rapid as in a fall; then slow, slow, petering
out little by little in the ever-increasing density of the deeper
waters. A mysterious journey of many leagues into unplumbed abysms;
during which the darkened sun shows first like a pale moon, then turns
green, then trembles, and finally is effaced. And then the eternal
darkness begins; the waters rise, rise, gathering over the head of the
dead traveller like the waters of a deluge which should reach up to the
stars.
But, below, the dead body has lost its loathsomeness; matter is never
unclean in an absolute sense. In the darkness the invisible animals of
the deep waters will come and encompass it; the mysterious madrepores
will put forth upon it their branches, eating it very slowly with the
thousand little mouths of their living flowers.
This grave of sailors cannot be violated by any human hand. He who has
descended to sleep below is more dead than any other dead man; nothing
of him will ever appear again; never will he mingle with that old dust
of men which, on the surface of the earth, is for ever seeking to
recombine in an eternal effort to live again. He belongs to the life of
the world below; he is going to pass into plants of colourless stone,
into sluggish animals which are without shape and without eyes. . . .