THE SHIP OF CORAL
_BY DR. STACPOOLE_
The Crimson Azaleas
The Blue Lagoon
Garryowen
The Pools of Silence
The Drums of War
Patsy
Poems and Ballads
[Illustration: “Gaspard drew her towards him.”]
THE
SHIP OF CORAL
BY
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. JEAN FRANÇOIS DE NANTES 1
II. A SECRET OF THE SEA 8
III. EVENING 15
IV. SPANISH GOLD 19
V. AMIDST THE BUSHES 27
VI. ALONE 30
VII. THE BOAT 42
VIII. THE ESCAPE 49
IX. A STAR ON THE SEA 53
X. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 56
XI. CAPTAIN SAGESSE 61
XII. RUM 65
XIII. LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE 71
XIV. THE MONEY CHANGER 76
XV. THE MAGIC TOWN 83
XVI. RUE VICTOR HUGO 89
XVII. THE BELLS AND THE RAIN 102
XVIII. LOVE 106
XIX. MARIE OF MORNE ROUGE 122
XX. FATE 130
XXI. THE FLEUR D’AMOUR 134
XXII. THE ROAD TO GRANDE ANSE 139
XXIII. THEY MEET 144
XXIV. FLOWER OF LIGHT 157
XXV. SIMON SERPENTE 160
XXVI. SKELETON ISLAND 182
XXVII. THE GARDEN OF LOVE 186
XXVIII. THE FATEFUL LIGHT 192
XXIX. THE SAILING OF LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE 198
XXX. PEDRO 202
XXXI. A FORT DE FRANCE, AY, HO! 208
XXXII. THE FO’CS’LE 211
XXXIII. THE REVOLVER 215
XXXIV. THE VISION OF TREASURE 221
XXXV. THE LANDING 230
XXXVI. THE SKULLS 236
XXXVII. SAGESSE IS CORNERED 240
XXXVIII. THE AWAKENING 243
XXXIX. DISASTER 249
XL. THE PASSING OF SAGESSE 257
XLI. TREASURE 264
XLII. THE MORNING SEA 275
XLIII. DELIVERANCE 283
XLIV. SIMON STOCK 287
XLV. MOUNT PELÉE 293
XLVI. ASHES 299
XLVII. THE FOOTSTEP IN THE DUST 302
THE SHIP OF CORAL
CHAPTER I
JEAN FRANÇOIS DE NANTES
JEAN FRANÇOIS—JEAN FRANÇOIS
The sea lay blue to the far horizon. Blue—Ah, blue is but a name
till you have seen the sea that breaks around the Bahamas and gives
anchorage to the tall ships at Port Royal; that great sheet of blue
water stretching from Cape Catoche to the Windward Islands, and from
Yucatan to beyond the Bahamas, studded with banks and keys and reefs,
the old sea of the Buccaneers shot over with the doings of Kidd and
Singleton and Horne.
On the salt white sand in the blinding dazzle of sunlight the waves
were falling, clear-green, crystalline, each lovely as a jewel. The
crying of the gulls, loud all the morning, had died down with high
afternoon and high tide; the wind had faded as though withered by the
sun. Just at the moment of high tide the sea makes a pause in its
eternal labour, the great act of systole has been accomplished and,
break the waves as they may, the profound languor of the ocean makes
itself heard and felt.
Gaspard Cadillac, ex-stoker of the _Rhone_, sitting with his back
against a palm tree cleaning an old tobacco pipe and absorbed in the
job, felt this pause and hold-up in nature just as the gulls felt
it—just as much and just as little as they.
“I have raised my horizon,” said the sea. “I have lifted fleets towards
heaven, hidden reefs; I have drained the occidental shores and domed
with water the Indies, I rest from my labours and I dream.”
Our man beneath the tree was a Moco. The French navy is divided into
two great classes, the men from the south and the men from the north,
the Moco and the Ponantaise.
Gaspard was a man from the south, a Provençal, dark, handsome in a
rough way, wiry and vivid. Yves, his bosom companion, also a stoker of
the _Rhone_ and the only survivor with Gaspard of the wreck of that
ill-fated ship, was a Ponantaise, a big man from Bretagne with a blond
beard. Yves was over away on the other side of the little island now
hunting for what he might find in the rock pools and creeks. Away out
there in a right line from where Gaspard was sitting beneath the palm
trees, under the blinding dazzle of sea, the _Rhone_ was lying with her
bottom ripped out, her boilers burst, her boats hanging smashed at her
davits; a horrible travesty of a ship, knocked under the sea as if with
the blow of a giant’s fist, a raffle of ropes, machinery, and corpses.
The gods had been very good to Gaspard and Yves, and Gaspard had,
by the direction of the gods, been the salvation of Yves. The whole
catastrophe had come like a clap of thunder on a moonlit sea. The
“Haa-r _rip_” of the reef that had been waiting a million years for the
_Rhone_, the screaming of scalding steam and scalded men, a wild bellow
from the siren, the roar of the boilers opening out, and the shout of
the lifting decks, all that, so thunderous and apocalyptic, so full of
tragedy, and torment, and woe, filled the night for a moment for miles
around, and then there was nothing but the moonlit sea.
Yves was a good swimmer, but his heart had gone out in him; he had been
held down under water by the suck of the sinking ship, and he would
have drowned to a certainty only for Gaspard, who was a bad swimmer but
a bad drowner.
The wiry Provençal, courageous as a rat, had held Yves’ head above
water till Yves felt the sea slapping him in the face and saw a great
spar lifting and dripping in the moonlight; saw Gaspard seize the spar,
a picture almost instantaneous, a picture that told him at once the
truth and made him strike out for safety.
The set of the current had carried the spar to the islet. One might
have fancied that the sea, repenting for that sin of hers, had
determined to save these two last survivors of the _Rhone_. But the sea
cared for the men as much as she cared for the spar—less, for they
were lighter.
Boxes and crates had come drifting ashore, getting caught and tangled
in the reef-mesh to eastward of the islet; a horrible abundance of
provisions, all sorts of articles from the cargo, corpses, spars,
everything yet nothing, pounding about in the desolate reef-strewn
water, made the east side of the islet a place to avoid.
The two men in the few days since the wreck had salved enough food
to last them for months, there was a spring of water amidst the low
bay-cedar bushes that stretched from shore edge to shore edge, the
islet was in a trade track, and they were certain of near rescue; all
these circumstances made them easy of mind and made a holiday of the
episode.
Gaspard having cleaned the pipe to his satisfaction, filled it with
tobacco and lit it. Then he lay on his back with his head in the
scanty shade of the palm fronds, the peak of his cap over his eyes, the
smoke from his pipe curling upwards in the windless air.
Windless for a moment only. The tide had turned and with the turn of
the tide a faint breathing shook the palm tops against the blue. Maybe
it was the breeze carrying the voices nearer, but the crying of the
gulls seemed to louden with the turning tide.
Jean François de Nantes,
Jean François, Jean François,
Jean François de Nantes,
Jean François, Jean François.
The old interminable song of the French navy immortalized by Loti
sang in the ears of the Moco as he lay, blissful, forgetful, seeing
pictures, dreaming dreams.
Now he was in the stokehold of the _Rhone_ feeding furnace No. 2. He
could feel the cotton waste protecting his hands from the heat of the
rake; he could hear the clatter of the ash lift and the boom of the sea.
Hi! Hi! Hi! The weary, querulous call of the gulls brought up the
_Tamalpais_, a three-master in which he had served for a voyage.
Hi! Hi! Hi! It was the very voices of the men hauling on the halyards;
he could see the topsails bellying to the wind, the great sails held
hard against the blue, the yards, the studding sail booms; away from
years ago and across three thousand miles of sea came the voices of the
men hauling in chorus, echoes from the past answering the lamentable
crying of the gulls.
And now the _Tamalpais_ went to pieces, became a curl of smoke,
vanished, and he was on the wharves of Marseilles, in a bar standing
before a zinc counter, a chopin of wine, and a girl.
Ah! that was it, the girl; some piece of grit had been irritating
his mind for the last few minutes, something behind his laziness and
happiness had been working for his discomfort; we all know that feeling
when the subconscious self is grumbling or worrying over something that
the conscious self has forgotten for a moment.
Anisette was the name she went by; a pale-faced, undersized girl. You
would not, possibly, have looked at her twice, but had you done so you
would, were you a man, certainly have looked at her a third time.
She was of the type that appeals to a man’s passions, never to his
heart, and she stood at the bar of the Riga where the Swedes and
Norwegians congregate, and there Yves and Gaspard had fallen in with
her and she had favoured Yves.
The big, blond Yves had captured this little pirate who had sailed for
years unharmed and harmful. She had scorned Gaspard, who would have
given his hand for a glance from her, and she had given herself wholly
to Yves.
Had he loved the woman with a pure and simple love Gaspard might have
forgiven Yves, his bosom companion, for the victory; his affection for
Yves was one of those brotherly loves that ennoble a man, and the Moco
was capable, perhaps, of a splendid abnegation. But Yves had crossed
him in his passions and the Moco was a man who could never forgive that.
Hi! Hi! Hi!
Girl and bar and Riga tavern vanished, giving place to Marseilles
harbour, with the _Rhone_ thrashing her way out. A passenger had given
Yves a cigar; it was always the way; Yves had all the luck; if there
was a cigar or a drink going it always fell to Yves—or a girl—yet he,
Gaspard, had saved this man’s life.
Now, on board ship, at work, all these grumblings would have been there
in the heart of Gaspard, but they would have been undeveloped; here,
in idleness, they grew; and to visualize the awful power of woman it
is enough to make your mental standpoint the apex of a vast triangle
the other two angles of which are Anisette serving drinks in the
tobacco-smelling bar of the Riga and the Moco beneath the palm trees
warring in thought against his bosom friend Yves.
A great crab fell with a thud on the sand beside Gaspard, who sprang
half erect to find himself face to face with Yves.
The Ponantaise was laughing. He had caught the crab amidst the rocks;
he had two more under his arm, their claws tied together with a string;
he had found a boat sail from the _Rhone_ and a small spar, out of
which he intended to make a tent; he flung the lot on the sand and then
sat down beside his companion, took out his pipe, filled it, lit it,
and began to smoke.
The Moco, after his exclamation of surprise, had fallen back in his old
position, and the two men smoked without interchanging a word.
They would go like this for a long time without speaking a word. One
might have fancied them enemies, or at least put out at one another;
not at all. They were simply sharing the tremendous taciturnity of
their species. All who help in the labor of the sea share in its
weariness, _Vasta Silentio_, the motto, is written on the waves.
Hi! Hi! Hi!
The breeze had freshened a bit, giving life and energy to the calling
of the gulls; the Moco, his pipe out, pushed his cap back from his eyes
and sat up.
“See here,” said Yves, “you know over there where I fetched these
things from—well—over there I’ve found something.”