He lived in a hut on a jutting crag of the Cliff of the King. You could
get to it by a hard climb up a precipitous pathway, or by a ladder
of ropes which swung from his cottage door down the cliff-side to the
sands. The bay that washed the sands was called Belle Amour. The cliff
was huge, sombre; it had a terrible granite moroseness. If you travelled
back from its edge until you stood within the very heart of Labrador,
you would add step upon step of barrenness and austerity.
Only at seasons did the bay share the gloom of the cliff. When out
of its shadow it was, in summer, very bright and playful, sometimes
boisterous, often idle, coquetting with the sands. There was a great
difference between the cliff and the bay: the cliff was only as it
appeared, but the bay was a shameless hypocrite. For under one shoulder
it hid a range of reefs, and, at a spot where the shadows of the cliff
never reached it, and the sun played with a grim kind of joy, a long
needle of rock ran up at an angle under the water, waiting to pierce
irresistibly the adventurous ship that, in some mad moment, should creep
to its shores.
The man was more like the cliff than the bay: stern, powerful, brooding.
His only companions were the Indians, who in summer-time came and went,
getting stores of him, which he in turn got from a post of the Hudson’s
Bay Company, seventy miles up the coast. At one time the Company,
impressed by the number of skins brought to them by the pilot, and the
stores he bought of them, had thought of establishing a post at Belle
Amour; but they saw that his dealings with them were fair and that he
had small gain, and they decided to use him as an unofficial agent, and
reap what profit was to be had as things stood. Kenyon, the Company’s
agent, who had the Post, was keen to know why Gaspard the pilot lived at
Belle Amour. No white man sojourned near him, and he saw no one save
now and then a priest who travelled silently among the Indians, or
some fisherman, hunter, or woodsman, who, for pleasure or from pure
adventure, ran into the bay and tasted the hospitality tucked away on a
ledge of the Cliff of the King.
To Kenyon, Gaspard was unresponsive, however adroit the catechism.
Father Corraine also, who sometimes stepped across the dark threshold of
Gaspard’s hut, would have, for the man’s soul’s sake, dug out the heart
of his secret; but Gaspard, open with food, fire, blanket, and tireless
attendance, closed like the doors of a dungeon when the priest would
have read him. At the name of good Ste. Anne he would make the sacred
gesture, and would take a blessing when the priest passed from his hut
to go again into the wilds; but when pressed to disclose his mind and
history, he would always say: “M’sieu’, I have nothing to confess.”
After a number of years the priest ceased to ask him, and he remained
with the secret of his life, inscrutable and silent.
Being vigilant, one would have seen, however, that he lived in some
land of memory or anticipation, beyond his life of daily toil and usual
dealing. The hut seemed to have been built at a point where east and
west and south the great gulf could be seen and watched. It seemed
almost ludicrous that a man should call himself a pilot on a coast and
at a bay where a pilot was scarce needed once a year. But he was known
as Gaspard the pilot, and on those rare occasions when a vessel did
anchor in the bay, he performed his duties with such a certainty as to
leave unguessed how many deathtraps crouched near that shore. At such
times, however, Gaspard seemed to look twenty years younger. A light
would come into his face, a stalwart kind of pride sit on him, though
beneath there lurked a strange, sardonic look in his deep eyes--such a
grim furtiveness as though he should say: “If I but twist my finger we
are all for the fishes.” But he kept his secret and waited. He never
seemed to tire of looking down the gulf, as though expecting some ship.
If one appeared and passed on, he merely nodded his head, hung up his
glass, returned to his work, or, sitting by the door, talked to himself
in low, strange tones. If one came near, making as if it would enter
the bay, a hungry joy possessed him. If a storm was on, the joy was the
greater. No pilot ever ventured to a ship on such rough seas as Gaspard
ventured for small profit or glory.
Behind it all lay his secret. There came one day a man who discovered
it.
It was Pierre, the half-breed adventurer. There was no point in all the
wild northland which Pierre had not touched. He loved it as he loved the
game of life. He never said so of it, but he never said so of the game
of life, and he played it with a deep subterranean joy. He had had his
way with the musk-ox in the Arctic Circle; with the white bear at the
foot of Alaskan Hills; with the seal in Baffin’s Bay; with the puma on
the slope of the Pacific; and now at last he had come upon the trail of
Labrador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. He smiled at it the
comprehending smile of the man who has fingered the nerves and the heart
of men and things. As a traveller, wandering through a prison, looks
upon its grim cells and dungeons with the eye of unembarrassed freedom,
finding no direful significance in the clank of its iron, so Pierre
travelled down with a handful of Indians through the hard fastnesses of
that country, and, at last, alone, came upon the bay of Belle Amour.
There was in him some antique touch of refinement and temperament which,
in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, could find
its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward
hour. He was a man of little speech, but he had that rare persuasive
penetration which unlocked the doors of trouble, despair, and tragedy.
Men who would never have confessed to a priest confessed to him. In
his every fibre was the granite of the Indian nature, which looked upon
punishment with stoic satisfaction.
In the heart of Labrador he had heard of Gaspard, and had travelled to
that point in the compass where he could find him. One day when the sun
was fighting hard to make a pathway of light in front of Gaspard’s
hut, Pierre rounded a corner of the cliff and fronted Gaspard as he sat
there, his eyes idling gloomily with the sea. They said little to each
other--in new lands hospitality has not need of speech. When Gaspard
and Pierre looked each other in the eyes they knew that one word between
them was as a hundred with other men. The heart knows its confessor,
and the confessor knows the shadowed eye that broods upon some ghostly
secret; and when these are face to face there comes a merciless
concision of understanding.
“From where away?” said Gaspard, as he handed some tobacco to Pierre.
“From Hudson’s Bay, down the Red Wolf Plains, along the hills, across
the coast country, here.”
“Why?” Gaspard eyed Pierre’s small kit with curiosity; then flung up a
piercing, furtive look. Pierre shrugged his shoulders.
“Adventure, adventure,” he answered. “The land”--he pointed north, west,
and east--“is all mine. I am the citizen of every village and every camp
of the great north.”
The old man turned his head towards a spot up the shore of Belle Amour,
before he turned to Pierre again, with a strange look, and said: “Where
do you go?”
Pierre followed his gaze to that point in the shore, felt the
undercurrent of vague meaning in his voice, guessed what was his cue,
and said: “Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle Amour. I have had
a long travel. I have found an open door. I will stay--if you
please--hein? If you please?”
Gaspard brooded. “It is lonely,” he replied. “This day it is all bright;
the sun shines and the little gay waves crinkle to the shore. But, mon
Dieu! sometimes it is all black and ugly with storm. The waves come
grinding, booming in along the gridiron rocks”--he smiled a grim
smile--“break through the teeth of the reefs, and split with a roar of
hell upon the cliff. And all the time, and all the time,”--his voice got
low with a kind of devilish joy,--“there is a finger--Jesu! you should
see that finger of the devil stretch up from the bowels of the earth,
waiting, waiting for something to come out of the storm. And then--and
then you can hear a wild laugh come out of the land, come up from the
sea, come down from the sky--all waiting, waiting for something! No, no,
you would not stay here.”
Pierre looked again to that point in the shore towards which Gaspard’s
eyes had been cast. The sun was shining hard just then, and the stern,
sharp rocks, tumbling awkwardly back into the waste behind, had an
insolent harshness. Day perched garishly there. Yet now and then the
staring light was broken by sudden and deep shadows--great fissures in
the rocks and lanes between. These gave Pierre a suggestion, though why,
he could not say. He knew that when men live lives of patient, gloomy
vigilance, they generally have something to watch and guard. Why should
Gaspard remain here year after year? His occupation was nominally a
pilot in a bay rarely touched by vessels, and then only for shelter. A
pilot need not take his daily life with such brooding seriousness.
In body he was like flexible metal, all cord and muscle. He gave the
impression of bigness, though he was small in stature. Yet, as Pierre
studied him, he saw something that made him guess the man had had about
him one day a woman, perhaps a child; no man could carry that look
unless. If a woman has looked at you from day to day, something of her,
some reflection of her face, passes to yours and stays there; and if a
child has held your hand long, or hung about your knees, it gives you a
kind of gentle wariness as you step about your home.
Pierre knew that a man will cherish with a deep, eternal purpose a
memory of a woman or a child, when, no matter how compelling his cue
to remember where a man is concerned, he will yield it up in the end to
time. Certain speculations arranged themselves definitely in Pierre’s
mind: there was a woman, maybe a child once; there was some sorrowful
mystery about them; there was a point in the shore that had held the old
man’s eyes strangely; there was the bay with that fantastic “finger of
the devil” stretching up from the bowels of the world. Behind the symbol
lay the Thing what was it?
Long time he looked out upon the gulf, then his eyes drew into the bay
and stayed there, seeing mechanically, as a hundred fancies went through
his mind. There were reefs of which the old man had spoken. He could
guess from the colour and movement of the water where they were. The
finger of the devil--was it not real? A finger of rock, waiting as the
old man said--for what?
Gaspard touched his shoulder. He rose and went with him into the gloomy
cabin. They ate and drank in silence. When the meal was finished they
sat smoking till night fell. Then the pilot lit a fire, and drew his
rough chair to the door. Though it was only late summer, it was cold
in the shade of the cliff. Long time they sat. Now and again Pierre
intercepted the quick, elusive glance of his silent host. Once the pilot
took the pipe from his mouth, and leaned his hands on his knees as if
about to speak. But he did not.
Pierre saw that the time was ripe for speech. So he said, as though he
knew something: “It is a long time since it happened?”
Gaspard, brooding, answered: “Yes, a long time--too long.” Then, as if
suddenly awakened to the strangeness of the question, he added, in a
startled way: “What do you know? Tell me quick what you know.”
“I know nothing except what comes to me here, pilot,”--Pierre touched
his forehead, “but there is a thing--I am not sure what. There was a
woman--perhaps a child; there is something on the shore; there is a
hidden point of rock in the bay; and you are waiting for a ship--for the
ship, and it does not come--isn’t that so?”
Gaspard got to his feet, and peered into Pierre’s immobile face. Their
eyes met.
“Mon Dieu!” said the pilot, his hand catching the smoke away from
between them, “you are a droll man; you have a wonderful mind. You are
cold like ice, and still there is in you a look of fire.”
“Sit down,” answered Pierre quietly, “and tell me all. Perhaps I could
think it out little by little; but it might take too long--and what is
the good?”
Slowly Gaspard obeyed. Both hands rested on his knees, and he stared
abstractedly into the fire. Pierre thrust forward the tobacco-bag.
His hand lifted, took the tobacco, and then his eyes came keenly to
Pierre’s. He was about to speak.... “Fill your pipe first,” said the
half-breed coolly. The old man did so abstractedly. When the pipe was
lighted, Pierre said: “Now!”
“I have never told the story, never--not even to Pere Corraine. But
I know, I have it here”--he put his hand to his forehead, as did
Pierre--“that you will be silent.” Pierre nodded.
“She was fine to see. Her eyes were black as beads; and when she laugh
it was all music. I was so happy! We lived on the island of the Aux
Coudres, far up there at Quebec. It was a wild place. There were
smugglers and others there--maybe pirates. But she was like a saint of
God among all. I was lucky man. I was pilot, and took ships out to sea,
and brought them in safe up the gulf. It is not all easy, for there are
mad places. Once or twice when a wild storm was on I could not land at
Cap Martin, and was carried out to sea and over to France.... Well, that
was not so bad; there was plenty to eat and drink, nothing to do. But
when I marry it was differen’. I was afraid of being carried away and
leave my wife--the belle Mamette--alone long time. You see, I was young,
and she was ver’ beautiful.”
He paused and caught his hand over his mouth as though to stop a sound:
the lines of his face deepened. Presently he puffed his pipe so hard
that the smoke and the sparks hid him in a cloud through which he spoke.
“When the child was born--Holy Mother! have you ever felt the hand of
your own child in yours, and looked at the mother, as she lies there all
pale and shining between the quilts?”
He paused. Pierre’s eyes dropped to the floor. Gaspard continued: “Well,
it is a great thing, and the babe was born quick one day when we were
all alone. A thing like that gives you wonder. Then I could not bear to
go away with the ships, and at last I said: ‘One month, and then the
ice fills the gulf, and there will be no more ships for the winter.
That will be the last for me. I will be pilot no more-no.’ She was ver’
happy, and a laugh ran over her little white teeth. Mon Dieu, I stop
that laugh pretty quick--in fine way!”
He seemed for an instant to forget his great trouble, and his face went
to warm sunshine like a boy’s; but it was as sun playing on a scarred
fortress. Presently the light faded out of his face and left it like
iron smouldering from the bellows.
“Well,” he said, “you see there was a ship to go almost the last of the
season, and I said to my wife, ‘Mamette, it is the last time I shall be
pilot. You must come with me and bring the child, and they will put us
off at Father Point, and then we will come back slow to the village on
the good Ste. Anne and live there ver’ quiet.’ When I say that to her
she laugh back at me and say, ‘Beau! beau!’ and she laugh in the child’s
eyes, and speak--nom de Dieu! she speak so gentle and light--and say to
the child: ‘Would you like go with your father a pretty journey down the
gulf?’ And the little child laugh back at her, and shake its soft brown
hair over its head. They were both so glad to go. I went to the captain
of the ship. I say to him, ‘I will take my wife and my little child, and
when we come to Father Point we will go ashore.’ Bien, the captain laugh
big, and it was all right. That was long time ago--long time.”
He paused again, threw his head back with a despairing toss, his chin
dropped on his breast, his hands clasped between his knees, and his
pipe, laid beside him on the bench, was forgotten.
Pierre quietly put some wood upon the fire, opened his kit, drew out
from it a little flask of rum and laid it upon the bench beside the
pipe. A long time passed. At last Gaspard roused himself with a long
sigh, turned and picked up the pipe, but, seeing the flask of rum,
lifted it, and took one long swallow before he began to fill and light
his pipe. There came into his voice something of iron hardness as he
continued his story.
“Alors, we went into the boat. As we travelled down the gulf a great
storm came out of the north. We thought it would pass, but it stayed on.
When we got to the last place where the pilot could land, the waves were
running like hills to the shore, and no boat could live between the ship
and the point. For myself, it was nothing--I am a strong man and a great
swimmer. But when a man has a wife and a child, it is differen’. So the
ship went on out into the ocean with us. Well, we laugh a little, and
think what a great brain I had when I say to my wife: ‘Come and bring
the child for the last voyage of Gaspard the pilot.’ You see, there we
were on board the ship, everything ver’ good, plenty to eat, much to
drink, to smoke, all the time. The sailors, they were ver’ funny, and to
see them take my child, my little Babette, and play with her as she roll
on the deck--merci, it was gran’! So I say to my wife:
“‘This will be bon voyage for all.’ But a woman, she has not the mind
like a man. When a man laugh in the sun and think nothing of evil, a
woman laugh too, but there come a little quick sob to her lips. You ask
her why, and she cannot tell. She know that something will happen. A man
has great idee, a woman great sight. So my wife, she turn her face away
all sad from me then, and she was right--she was right!
“One day in the ocean we pass a ship--only two days out. The ship signal
us. I say to my wife: ‘Ha, ha! now we can go back, maybe, to the good
Ste. Anne.’ Well, the ships come close together, and the captain of the
other ship he have something importan’ with ours. He ask if there will
be chance of pilot into the gulf, because it is the first time that he
visit Quebec. The captain swing round and call to me. I go up. I bring
my wife and my little Babette; and that was how we sail back to the
great gulf.
“When my wife step on board that ship I see her face get pale, and
something strange in her eyes. I ask her why; she do not know, but she
hug Babette close to her breast with a kind of fear. A long, low, black
ship, it could run through every sea. Soon the captain come to me and
say: ‘You know the coast, the north coast of the gulf, from Labrador to
Quebec?’ I tell him yes. ‘Well,’ he say, ‘do you know of a bay where few
ships enter safe?’ I think a moment and I tell him of Belle Amour. Then
he say, ver’ quick: ‘That is the place; we will go to the bay of Belle
Amour.’ He was ver’ kind to my face; he give my wife and child
good berth, plenty to eat and drink, and once more I laugh; but my
wife--there was in her face something I not understan’. It is not easy
to understan’ a woman. We got to the bay. I had pride: I was young. I
was the best pilot in the St. Lawrence, and I took in the ship between
the reefs of the bay, where they run like a gridiron, and I laugh when I
swing the ship all ver’ quick to the right, after we pass the reefs, and
make a curve round--something. The captain pull me up and ask why. But
I never tell him that. I not know why I never tell him. But the good God
put the thought into my head, and I keep it to this hour, and it never
leave me, never--never!”
He slowly rubbed his hands up and down his knees, took another sip of
rum, and went on:
“I brought the ship close up to the shore, and we go to anchor. All that
night I see the light of a fire on the shore. So I slide down and swim
to the shore. Under a little arch of rocks something was going on.
I could not tell, but I know from the sound that they are to bury
something. Then, all at once, it come to me--this is a pirate ship! I
come closer and closer to the light, and then I see a dreadful thing.
There was the captain and the mate, and another. They turn quick upon
two other men--two sailors--and kill them. Then they take the bodies
and wound them round some casks in a great hole, and cover it all up. I
understan’. It is the old legend that a dead body will keep gold all to
itself, so that no one shall find it. Mon Dieu!”--his voice dropped low
and shook in his throat--“I give one little cry at the sight, and then
they see me. There were three. They were armed; they sprang upon me and
tied me. Then they fling me beside the fire, and they cover up the hole
with the gold and the bodies.
“When that was done they take me back to the ship, then with pistols at
my head they make me pilot the ship out into the bay again. As we went
they make a chart of the place. We travel along the coast for one day;
and then a great storm of snow come, and the captain say to me: ‘Steer
us into harbour.’ When we are at anchor, they take me and my wife, and
little child and put us ashore alone, with a storm and the bare rocks
and the dreadful night, and leave us there, that we shall never tell the
secret of the gold. That night my wife and my child die in the snow.”
Here his voice became strained and slow. “After a long time I work my
way to an Injin camp. For months I was a child in strength, all my flesh
gone. When the spring come I went and dug a deeper grave for my wife,
and p’tite Babette, and leave them there, where they had died. But I
come to the bay of Belle Amour, because I knew some day the man with
the devil’s heart would come back for his gold, and then would arrive my
time--the hour of God!”
He paused. “The hour of God,” he repeated slowly. “I have waited twenty
years, but he has not come; yet I know that he will come. I feel it
here”--he touched his forehead; “I know it here”--he tapped his heart.
“Once where my heart was, there is only one thing, and it is hate, and I
know--I know--that he will come. And when he comes--” He raised his arm
high above his head, laughed wildly, paused, let the hand drop, and then
fell to staring into the fire.
Pierre again placed the flask of rum between his fingers. But Gaspard
put it down, caught his arms together across his breast, and never
turned his face from the fire. Midnight came, and still they sat there
silent. No man had a greater gift in waiting than Pierre. Many a time
his life had been a swivel, upon which the comedies and tragedies of
others had turned. He neither loved nor feared men: sometimes he pitied
them. He pitied Gaspard. He knew what it is to have the heartstrings
stretched out, one by one, by the hand of a Gorgon, while the feet are
chained to the rocking world.
Not till the darkest hour of the morning did the two leave their silent
watch and go to bed. The sun had crept stealthily to the door of the but
before they rose again. Pierre laid his hand upon Gaspard’s shoulder as
they travelled out into the morning, and said: “My friend, I understand.
Your secret is safe with me; you shall take me to the place where the
gold is buried, but it shall wait there until the time is ripe. What is
gold to me? Nothing. To find gold--that is the trick of any fool. To win
it or to earn it is the only game. Let the bodies rot about the gold.
You and I will wait. I have many friends in the northland, but there
is no face in any tent door looking for me. You are alone: well, I will
stay with you. Who can tell--perhaps it is near at hand--the hour of
God!”
The huge hard hand of Gaspard swallowed the small hand of Pierre, and,
in a voice scarcely above a whisper, he answered: “You shall be my
comrade. I have told you all, as I have never told it to my God. I do
not fear you about the gold--it is all cursed. You are not like other
men; I will trust you. Some time you also have had the throat of a man
in your fingers, and watched the life spring out of his eyes, and leave
them all empty. When men feel like that, what is gold--what is anything!
There is food in the bay and on the hills.
“We will live together, you and I. Come and I will show you the place of
hell.”
Together they journeyed down the crag and along the beach to the place
where the gold, the grim god of this world, was fortressed and bastioned
by its victims.
The days went on; the weeks and months ambled by. Still the two lived
together. Little speech passed between them, save that speech of
comrades, who use more the sign than the tongue. It seemed to Pierre
after a time that Gaspard’s wrongs were almost his own. Yet with this
difference: he must stand by and let the avenger be the executioner; he
must be the spectator merely.
Sometimes he went inland and brought back moose, caribou, and the skins
of other animals, thus assisting Gaspard in his dealings with the great
Company. But again there were days when he did nothing but lie on the
skins at the hut’s door, or saunter in the shadows and the sunlight.
Not since he had come to Gaspard had a ship passed the bay or sought to
anchor in it.
But there came a day. It was the early summer. The snow had shrunk from
the ardent sun, and had swilled away to the gulf, leaving the tender
grass showing. The moss on the rocks had changed from brown to green,
and the vagrant birds had fluttered back from the south. The winter’s
furs had been carried away in the early spring to the Company’s post,
by a detachment of coureurs de bois. There was little left to do. This
morning they sat in the sun looking out upon the gulf. Presently Gaspard
rose and went into the hut. Pierre’s eyes still lazily scanned the
water. As he looked he saw a vessel rounding a point in the distance.
Suppose this was the ship of the pirate and murderer? The fancy diverted
him. His eyes drew away from the indistinct craft--first to the reefs,
and then to that spot where the colossal needle stretched up under the
water. It was as Pierre speculated. Brigond, the French pirate, who had
hidden his gold at such shameless cost, was, after twenty years in the
galleys at Toulon, come back to find his treasure. He had doubted little
that he would find it. The lonely spot, the superstition concerning dead
bodies, the supposed doom of Gaspard, all ran in his favour. His little
craft came on, manned by as vile a mob as ever mutinied or built a
wrecker’s fire.
When the ship got within a short distance of the bay, Pierre rose and
called. Gaspard came to the door. “There’s work to do, pilot,” he said.
Gaspard felt the thrill of his voice, and flashed a look out to the
gulf. He raised his hands with a gasp. “I feel it,” he said: “it is the
hour of God!”
He started to the rope ladder of the cliff, then wheeled suddenly and
came back to Pierre. “You must not come,” he said. “Stay here and watch;
you shall see great things.” His voice had a round, deep tone. He caught
both Pierre’s hands in his and added: “It is for my wife and child; I
have no fear. Adieu, my friend! When you see the good Pere Corraine say
to him--but no, it is no matter--there is One greater!”
Once again he caught Pierre hard by the shoulder, then ran to the cliff
and swung down the ladder. All at once there shot through Pierre’s body
an impulse, and his eyes lighted with excitement. He sprang towards
the cliff. “Gaspard, come back!” he called; then paused, and, with an
enigmatical smile, shrugged his shoulders, drew back, and waited.
The vessel was hove to outside the bay, as if hesitating. Brigond was
considering whether it were better, with his scant chart, to attempt the
bay, or to take small boats and make for the shore. He remembered the
reefs, but he did not know of the needle of rock. Presently he saw
Gaspard’s boat coming. “Someone who knows the bay,” he said; “I see a
hut on the cliff.”
“Hello, who are you?” Brigond called down as Gaspard drew alongside.
“A Hudson’s Bay Company’s man,” answered Gaspard.
“How many are there of you?”
“Myself alone.”
“Can you pilot us in?”
“I know the way.”
“Come up.”
Gaspard remembered Brigond, and he veiled his eyes lest the hate he felt
should reveal him. No one could have recognised him as the young pilot
of twenty years before. Then his face was cheerful and bright, and in
his eye was the fire of youth. Now a thick beard and furrowing lines hid
all the look of the past. His voice, too, was desolate and distant.
Brigond clapped him on the shoulder. “How long have you lived off
there?” he asked, as he jerked his finger towards the shore.
“A good many years.”
“Did anything strange ever happen there?” Gaspard felt his heart
contract again, as it did when Brigond’s hand touched his shoulder.
“Nothing strange is known.”
A vicious joy came into Brigond’s face. His fingers opened and shut.
“Safe, by the holy heaven!” he grunted.
“‘By the holy heaven!’” repeated Gaspard, under his breath.
They walked forward. Almost as they did so there came a big puff of wind
across the bay: one of those sudden currents that run in from the ocean
and the gulf stream. Gaspard saw, and smiled. In a moment the vessel’s
nose was towards the bay, and she sailed in, dipping a shoulder to the
sudden foam. On she came past reef and bar, a pretty tumbril to the
slaughter. The spray feathered up to her sails, the sun caught her on
deck and beam; she was running dead for the needle of rock.
Brigond stood at Gaspard’s side. All at once Gaspard made the sacred
gesture and said, in a low tone, as if only to himself: “Pardon, mon
capitaine, mon Jesu!” Then he turned triumphantly, fiercely, upon
Brigond. The pirate was startled. “What’s the matter?” he said.
Not Gaspard, but the needle rock replied. There was a sudden shock;
the vessel stood still and shivered; lurched, swung shoulder downwards,
reeled and struggled. Instantly she began to sink.
“The boats! lower the boats!” cried Brigond. “This cursed fool has run
us on a rock!”
The waves, running high, now swept over the deck. Brigond started aft,
but Gaspard sprang before him. “Stand back!” he called. “Where you are
you die!”
Brigond, wild with terror and rage, ran at him. Gaspard caught him as he
came. With vast strength he lifted him and dashed him to the deck. “Die
there, murderer!” he cried.
Brigond crouched upon the deck, looking at him with fearful eyes.
“Who-are you?” he asked.
“I am Gaspard the pilot. I have waited for you twenty years. Up there,
in the snow, my wife and child died. Here, in this bay, you die.”
There was noise and racketing behind them, but they two heard nothing.
The one was alone with his terror, the other with his soul. Once, twice,
thrice, the vessel heaved, then went suddenly still.
Gaspard understood. One look at his victim, then he made the sacred
gesture again, and folded his arms. Pierre, from the height of the
cliff, looking down, saw the vessel dip at the bow, and then the waters
divided and swallowed it up.
“Gaspard should have lived,” he said. “But--who can tell! Perhaps
Mamette was waiting for him.”