LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE
At about six o’clock the next morning Gaspard awoke from sleep, half
stifled by the close air of the little cabin where Sagesse had placed
him. The taste of the rum was still in his mouth, and at a stroke, and
almost at the return of consciousness, the doings of the past night
rose before him—up to a certain point. He remembered the conversation
of Sagesse, he remembered taking the belt from his waist and flinging
it and the pouch of money on the table, but beyond that point he
remembered nothing.
He put his hand to his waist, belt and bag were gone. He put his legs
out of the bunk, and was just in the act of getting on his feet when
his hand rested on something hard, it was the pouch. It had not been
tampered with, he could tell that by the feel, but, to make sure, he
opened it and counted the gold pieces by the dim light which shone
through the scuttle overhead.
Yes, the twenty-one pieces of gold were there, solid, bright and hard.
He put the belt round his waist and buttoning his coat over the pouch
came on deck.
_La Belle Arlésienne_, close hauled under all sail, was making a full
eight knots steering S. S. E. with the coast of Haiti a line on the
southern horizon. She had altered her course in the night and she
lay now with the shoals and reefs south of Turks Island on her port
quarter, but nothing of them shewed, for the sea over that way under
the newborn sun lay like a blazing gem, a sheet of corrugated crystal,
each of whose million, million facets was a mirror; then, round from
there to where the bowsprit was poking at the sky above the sea line
went the sea, without sail or sign of life deepening in blueness to
where the far-off Haitian coast lay hyacinth coloured in the morning.
Gaspard looked around him, he could see no sign of Sagesse; a negro
dressed in a pair of canvas trousers held by a single suspender, stood
at the wheel, several more were grouped round the fo’csle-head engaged
on some business, and a thin streak of smoke from the caboose told of
breakfast in progress.
From where he stood the deck stretched away unencumbered by cargo,
and barred by the shadows of the standing rigging; they had taken the
boat on board, and she was lying bottom up on the deck forward of the
mainmast.
Despite her age, despite the decks so yellow stained by time that plank
and dowel were of the same colour and indistinguishable, despite the
sails all cut and patched, the old barquentine had still a look of
buoyancy and life caught from the brave morning light and the flooding
azure of sea and sky.
The smell of tar and bilge and rope, the groan of rubber and creak of
mast brought up for Gaspard the vision of the _Tamalpais_ and his early
youth. No other sensation is at all like the feel of a sailing ship
beneath one’s feet. The steamer is a dead weight driven by an alien
force, its progression is a continual insult to the wind and the sea,
but the sailing ship is one with the sea and the wind, her motion is
fluent, fresh, and part of the eternal movement of nature. As Gaspard
stood with his eyes fixed on the distant Haitian coast, Sagesse came
out of the deck-house and gave him good-morning.
The Captain had a telescope in his hand, and ranging himself beside
Gaspard he began to examine the coast-line attentively through the
glass.
Not a word did he say of the proceedings of the past night. He stood
picking out the points and headlands of the coast, remarking on them
now and then, and now and then throwing in some piece of reminiscence,
as “Over there—you can just see that bluish spot, it goes in deep,
the land there—that’s where a big English ship went on the rocks. The
_Severn_ in the storm of ’82. I helped in the salving. _Ma foi_, I have
never seen such a big ship with her back so broken. She was opened out
like a band-box. She was filled with millinery, too. New York fashions
for Jamaica; the rocks were dressed in chiffon, it was like the wreck
of the _Bon Marché_, and the negresses came down to help—you can
fancy!” or “That point, you can just see it with the eye to eastward
of the blue spot, over there they hanged the last of the pirates,
Freemantle—”
“What does he know, what did I say last night. I remember flinging the
money on the table, I remember saying something about Yves—but what?
Did I say much, did I say little? And the money, he must have picked
it up and put it in the pouch, and put the pouch and belt beside me as
I lay in the bunk, hog that I was—_mordieu_—what did I say?” These
thoughts were running through Gaspard’s mind as he stood watching his
companion and listening to his remarks almost without comprehending
them.
But Sagesse, whatever he knew, shewed nothing of his knowledge. He
chatted familiarly and easily, and when breakfast was brought aft by
Jules they sat down to it, and over the steaming coffee and fried bacon
and bananas, the Captain continued his easygoing discourse, chatting
on everything and nothing, but always with interest.
The blackguardly edge had gone off his conversation, it was only at
night it appeared whetted by alcohol, for Sagesse was a methodical
drinker, never glancing at the bottle till the absinthe hour.
Gaspard during the meal made an offer of work, but Sagesse would not
hear of it.
“You are a brother Provençal, well, I have picked you up floating about
on the sea and that’s all about it, I have more than enough hands to
work the ship, and your food, what does it cost? Besides, we can settle
up at St. Pierre. St. Pierre, Martinique, yes that is my port. You have
never been there? Ah, _mordieu_, then you have never seen life, you
will see it at St. Pierre where men know how to laugh, and love is as
cheap as bananas.”
“Well, I will be able to pay you,” said Gaspard, “that is to say if I
ever can pay you for all you have done for me.”
Sagesse laughed.
His face, ordinarily pleasant except for a certain fixity of the eyes,
lost its pleasantness in some strange way when he laughed.
Clean shaved, except for a rather heavy and drooping moustache, fat and
weather-tanned, in white cap and apron, save for his bronzing he would
have made an ideal chef; a concocter of sauces and _entremets_, fat
with the steam of his kitchen; but when he laughed he shewed his teeth
and just that one touch destroyed his _bonhommie_, for his laughter did
not extend above his mouth, and laughter is inhuman when the eyes do
not correct the teeth.
All day they kept the Haitian coast on the distant horizon, the water
had been blue off the island, but to Gaspard, as he hung over the side,
it seemed that this water was even bluer. It was; the Caribbean, that
great lake of burning indigo, was sending its colour to meet them, the
foam flakes from the fore-foot of the _Belle Arlésienne_ swept past
like marble shavings cast on slabs of lapis-lazuli, and violets would
have seemed pale and faded held against the background of the sea to
southward.