SIMON SERPENTE
He was awakened from sleep next morning by a voice outside his door.
It was the voice of Captain Sagesse. Then a knock came to the door and
instantly on the knock it opened and the Captain came into the room.
Gaspard had slept late, it was full morning and the light was strong
enough to shew Sagesse’s face and its expression. Something was
evidently the matter. He shut the door and crossed the room.
“Here’s a pretty thing,” said Sagesse. “I am betrayed, my affair has
been blown on—Have you spoken?”
“Spoken—on what?”
“_Mon Dieu!_ What else but the expedition.”
“I, never—not a word—at least—”
“Yes?”
“I said to one man that I was going on a voyage with you, but I said
nothing of the nature of the voyage.”
“Who was the man you spoke to?”
“An old gentleman of the name of Seguin.”
“Hell!” cried Sagesse, springing up from the chair on which he had
taken his seat. “Seguin. There is only one Seguin on the island—ah,
that’s where the money is coming from—” He ceased speaking, sat down
on the chair again, crushed his panama hat, which he had taken off,
between the palms of his hands and stared at the floor with a frown on
his forehead and his lips pursed up.
The evening before, Jules, his first mate and henchman, had brought him
wind of a rumour that was circulating amidst the drinking bars of the
harbour side.
A rumour that Missie Sagesse had discovered the whereabouts of a wreck
laden with kegs of gold dollars, that he was going to hunt for it, but
would, most likely, fail as another expedition was starting, financed
by a man much richer and more powerful than the Captain.
The whole thing had originated with Jules himself who, in his cups, had
talked to a coloured woman of the secret which Sagesse had hinted to
him. The hatred of the harbour side for Sagesse had supplied the other
imaginary expedition.
In reality, nothing was known of any importance. Yet Sagesse, with whom
suspicion was almost a disease, was sure that Gaspard had betrayed him.
The only thing that made him feel uncertain on the matter was the fact
that Gaspard was presumably unacquainted with any rich man capable of
working mischief. And now Gaspard had confessed speaking to Seguin on
the matter! Seguin, one of the richest men in the island and Sagesse’s
greatest enemy.
The whole thing was plain.
Another man would have given rein to his temper, accused Gaspard to his
face of the imaginary betrayal, come to blows with him.
But that was not the way of Captain Sagesse.
Gaspard was necessary to him as a working partner. If money were found,
a white man, single-handed, might have an exceedingly difficult time
with the black crew of _La Belle Arlésienne_. He had not time to find
another white man to take Gaspard’s place, simply because now that the
secret was known, the expedition must start as quickly as possible.
No, it would be very impolitic to fight with him now, afterwards—ah,
yes, afterwards when the money was salved and safe on board the ship,
when he had discovered the temper of the crew under treasure-strain,
then it would be different. He promised himself some satisfaction then,
and promising himself this he unbent his brows and ceased to purse his
lips.
“After all,” said he, “what does it matter? You say you told nothing
to Paul Seguin. I believe you. All the same, he has got wind of the
affair, he is going to send a man on the same job—”
“_Tenez_,” said Gaspard, “same job, how can he, when nobody knows about
the island but you and me?”
“Ah,” said Sagesse, “that’s the mystery—how indeed? But he knows it
and that is enough for me. I start in three days’ time.”
“Three days!”
“Yes, by working overtime, I’ll have the cargo out of the _Belle_ day
after to-morrow night—”
“_Vé_, but you will want time to get your tackle—”
“Oh, _mon Dieu_,” said Sagesse, “Do you think I ever say I’m going to
do a thing without having my plans ready made? Come with me and you
will see. We can have breakfast somewhere together and talk everything
over when I have done my business.”
Gaspard got up and dressed and then the two men left the house and
walked down the Rue du Morne side by side towards the harbour. Often
in his life, Sagesse had been approached on the subject of sunken
treasure. The Caribbean and the Atlantic about the Bahamas give a fine
field for theoretical treasure-seekers, locations of sunken ships had
been brought to him off Rum Cay, off Grand Cayman, off Matanzas. The
ships were there right enough only waiting to be rifled, but Sagesse
would have nothing to do with them. He had a profound knowledge of the
sea and its trickery. He knew that though the ships were there they
were tormented by currents, currents that varied with the ebb and flow
so that divers could work only at slack; he knew the power of these
currents to heap sand and hide treasure. He had seen the end of a
broken deep-sea cable brought up, half a mile of it tied in knots by
the mischievous hands of the currents as though some giant had been
playing with it.
“When a treasure ship lies a prey to the currents of the sea, there is
no use in hunting for treasure or for anything but disappointment,” was
an axiom with him.
What led him to the present adventure was the fact that the ship was
lying in a still lagoon in which diving operations could be conducted
as easily as in a lake. She was not sanded up but coralled over, and if
there was “stuff” in her a few charges of dynamite would soon lay her
open.
The morning was bright over the sea when they reached the harbour side,
_La Belle Arlésienne_ was lying out on the blue water, the lighters
beside her and the cargo coming out to the tune of winch pawls and the
chanty of the negroes—
A Fort de France Ay ho!
A Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux,
Ay ho!
A Fort de France,
A Fort de France,
Ay ho!
To southward of _La Belle Arlésienne_ a big three-master was
getting up anchor, a cable ship the _Grappler_ was tramping the bay
taking soundings. The water sinks to a tremendous depth here between
Martinique and Dominica and from the _Grappler_ away out on the violet
blue of the “deeps” came the faint sewing-machine whirr of the Kelvin
sounder at work.
_Canotiers_ were paddling their tiny cargoes round the steamer from
New York that had arrived the evening before and would start at noon;
one could see the little _canotiers,_ lemon-coloured slips of children
standing up and diving for coins flung by the passengers.
It was a picture full of the spirit of morning, full of colour, and
light, and movement, the hot wind of the tropics stirring flags and
shaking out sail-cloth; sea gulls were fishing, flickering snow-white
in the wind, their querulous cries came across the bay with the clank
of the winch pawls, capstan pawls, and anchor-chain, and the endless
chanty—
A Fort de France Ay ho!
A Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux,
Ay ho!
A Fort de France,
A Fort de France,
Ay ho!
Faint, musical with distance.
Sagesse, leading the way, they passed along the shore edge to the Place
Bertine.
The sunlight was just striking the Place Bertine over the shoulder of
Pelée. In the blaze of morning light with the sea and wind shaking
the tamarind trees, it formed a bright picture; women’s coloured
dresses, turbans of yellow madras, men, some clad in white, some half
naked, rolling the sugar hogsheads, laughing, and singing as they
worked, all coloured men, from the white Creole to the jet-black negro;
children—and you may be sure that wherever there is sugar either in
cane or barrel you will find children—playing games, running messages;
children black as sloes, yellow as bananas, honey-coloured babies
naked as on the day they were born; over all the warm tropic wind
blowing lazily, mixing the scent of the sea with the perfume of the
land, cigar scent—for even the women are smoking the black Martinique
_bouts_,—and the subtle ubiquitous scent of sugar in bulk.
Sagesse led the way across the Place to the row of warehouses and
go-downs bordering it on the shore edge. He paused at an archway giving
entrance to a big twilit warehouse, peeped into the gloom of the place
as if in search of someone or something, and then entered followed by
Gaspard.
It was an extraordinary warehouse, this, smelling of tar, sail-cloth,
and rope. Piles of rusty chain, cable, old anchors, capstan bars, spars
of all sorts, blocks of all sizes lay about, and in the gloom, ropes
and remnants of tackle hanging from the beams overhead gave a last
touch to the picture. One might have fancied it a cave in which a ship
had come to wreck, or several ships for the matter of that.
In the midst of all the rubbish and odds and ends, the owner of the
place, Monsieur Jaques, known as Jaques _tout court_ by shipmasters
from Port of Spain to Port Royal, moved about superintending three
men who were engaged with palm and needle patching a sail spread on a
vacant space of the floor.
There are some men who, vulture-like, make their living out of the
ruin and dead bones of things, only in that way do they prosper,
Jaques was one of these men, though you would never have guessed his
vulturous instincts from his appearance which was that of a plump
prosperous-looking business man, rather past the prime of life,
grey-headed, clean-shaven, always smiling, always calm, always polite,
always seeming to yield to your wishes—but iron in driving a bargain.
His business in life was the buying up of old ships and odds and ends
of ships for next to nothing, and selling the remains at a profit. If
you wanted an anchor or a suit of sails or a spar, he could always
supply you. He would buy wrecks even when they were sunken—that is
to say, of course, if they were lying in shallow water. He had bought
in this way the _Amine-Martell_, lying on the thunderous beach to
westward of Grande Anse. The bay in which she was lying was a death
trap inaccessible from the sea or from the land, the cliffs were sheer
walls of black rock polished and flawless; by lowering men over the
cliff edge by ropes he had salved thirty-five thousand dollars in gold
coin—a profitable business considering the fact that he had paid only
two thousand dollars for her as she lay.
From Curaçoa to Porto Rico he had conducted salvage operations,
fighting the sea for the pickings of ships, conducting the operations
in person when there seemed a chance of good profits on the job.
Sagesse took Monsieur Jaques aside and explained what he wanted whilst
Gaspard sat on a spar-end and watched the sail-patchers at work.
“I’ve got some diving work on hand,” said Sagesse. “I want two divers’
suits, a pump, everything complete. Have you them, and how much will
you charge to hire them for two months?”
“Two thousand dollars deposit and five hundred for the hire,” replied
Jaques without a moment’s hesitation.
“Three hundred and not a cent more.”
“My price is five hundred—and if you don’t like it I am sorry. I
have already been approached by a gentleman on the same subject. I am
expecting him here any moment, if he concludes the bargain with me,
where else will you get diving apparatus—not in Martinique.”
This of course was a lie, but the mind of Sagesse, fogged with
suspicion, saw in it a confirmation of the rumour that another
expedition was on foot. Jaques, watchful as a bird of prey, saw the
effect of his words without understanding entirely the reason.
“Who is this other person, then,” said Sagesse. “You can at least tell
me his name.”
“I never give names in business, Captain, but as you have been my
customer up to this, I will whisper something in your ear.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Jaques, lowering his voice, “I expect he is a gentleman on
the same business as yourself.”
“The Devil!” said Sagesse. Then, recollecting himself, he laughed.
“If he is, he’s on a business that won’t bring him much profit—well, I
can’t waste any more time, let’s see the suits and the apparatus.”
Jaques led the way through a door to the back premises, where in a shed
were the diving suits, the pump, the air tubes, all nearly new and in
good working order. The pump was constructed so that it could be fixed
in a boat or be used from on board ship. _La Belle Arlésienne_ had
a boat that would do for the work to a nicety, she would have to be
hauled across the islet and floated in the lagoon. The busy mind of
the captain was arranging all these details as he examined the gear.
Then, turning to Jaques:
“Three hundred for the hire and not a cent more.”
“Five hundred and not a cent less. Why should I let you have a thing
for three hundred which I can hire out to someone else for five—that
is not business.”
“Four hundred, come, the money down and the deposit.”
“Five hundred and not a cent less.”
“Four-fifty.”
“Why should I defraud myself of fifty dollars.”
“Well, five hundred be it.”
“And of course, M. le Capitaine, you will be responsible for any injury
to the apparatus.”
“There will be no injury—and now that we have concluded business, I’ll
tell you the name of the man who wanted to cut me out—who wanted to
hire these things.”
Jaques, pleased with the bargain he had struck, delighted with the
success of his ruse, and more delighted with the fact that it was
the wily Captain Sagesse who had fallen a victim to his bluff, said
nothing, but smiled.
“Shall I tell you?”
“If it pleases you.”
“Well, it was Paul Seguin—am I not right?”
“I cannot say—I never tell secrets of business.”
“Look here,” said Sagesse. “I want this matter put right. You and I
have known each other for years. I want the information because I
believe I have been betrayed on some business I have in hand. See here,
if you whisper the name of the man who came to you about those diving
suits, I’ll never tell, but I’ll be sure in my mind and on my guard,
and I’ll pay you five dollars for the information.”
He took the money from his pocket as he spoke. “You’ll not tell—it
will be kept entirely between ourselves?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Then give me your ear.” Jaques approached his head close to the
other’s and in a low voice said:
“Paul Seguin.”
“Thanks,” said Sagesse, handing over the money which Monsieur Jaques
pocketed. Five dollars for just a lie was the best bargain he had ever
made.
As Sagesse came through the warehouse, he found Gaspard still seated on
the spar end watching the sail-patchers at their work. He could have
shot him with all the pleasure in life, yet he greeted him cheerily and
with a smile.
It is a profound popular mistake to attribute no sense of honour to a
scoundrel.
He has the keenest sense of honour—in others. He feels when he is
betrayed just as an honourable man feels only, perhaps, more acutely.
“And now that we have finished business,” said Jaques, “will you
not take some refreshment, you and your friend?” He opened a door
leading from the warehouse to a room, half sitting-room, half office,
ushered them in, and opening another door, called for coffee, rum, and
cigarettes.
In a moment, a servant, bearing a huge tray spread with the ordinary
Martinique _petit déjeuner_, entered. Gaspard scarcely heard the
entrance of the servant, he was examining a picture hanging on the pine
boarding of the wall, a small, old-fashioned wood-engraving that had
struck his eye immediately he entered and now held him fascinated as
the serpent on the Place du Fort had held old M. Seguin.
It represented a man small and hideous, holding in one hand an immense
sword and in the other hand a whip.
He was dressed in a shirt and loose trousers, a broad sash was round
his waist and from the sash peeped the butt of a pistol.
The thing was horrible and grotesque. The man’s head and face were
scarcely larger than the head and face of a child; yet the face had in
it the ferocity of a demon; it was of extraordinary breadth across the
cheek bones.
The limbs, as far as the clothing allowed them to be seen, were
deformed, and as Gaspard stood fascinated and repelled, a shiver
ran through him. He had seen this man—this thing—before—where?
Impossible to say; in some past life, in some dream—glimpsed, perhaps,
in the midst of some crowd, through the fumes of tobacco in some
bar—somewhere, at some time in his life, he had seen that hideous head.
More, he felt that the creature, half man, half demon, had entered his
life once, bringing evil into it. Yet, wildly searching his memory, he
could remember nothing of the circumstance.
“Coffee or cognac?”
Monsieur Jaques was speaking and Gaspard turned from the picture and
accepting a cup of coffee and a cigarette, took his seat at the table
with the others.
Jaques, a cigar in his mouth and a cup of coffee before him, was deep
in trade talk with Sagesse and Gaspard, pretending interest in their
conversation, but hearing nothing, gazed round the room, taking in its
details.
The walls were decorated with drawings of ships, Carib paddles, gourds,
a glass case containing beetles and tarantulas, things of sea and land,
but mostly of the sea.
Here was a chart of the Yucatan Straits marked in ink with the
soundings of a wreck; beside it a chart of the waters just westward of
Nassau where lies a great pond of the sea nearly two hundred miles from
north to south surrounded with shoal water and reefs, this chart was
marked, too, with the position of a wreck. A battle-lantern that might
have lit Van Horne on some night expedition, hung from a staple near
the charts, Jaques had picked it up in the sands near San Juan; an old
curaçoa flask with a leathern handle, the earliest form of the bottle
in which the Dutch exported their liqueur, hung by the lantern. The
history of the Caribbean and the Spanish Main lay here in these things
and many more, but let his eyes rove as they might, Gaspard could not
stop them from returning to the picture that had fascinated him.
Taking advantage of a pause in the conversation between Jaques and
Sagesse, Gaspard leaned forward:
“Excuse me, monsieur,” said he, pointing to the picture, “but you have
a strange portrait on your wall, and the strangest thing about it is
that I feel I have seen the gentleman before.”
Jaques looked at the picture and laughed. “_Ma foi_,” said he, “if
you have seen him alive you are older than I am. You have most likely
seen him in a print, but not such a good print as that one, it is by
Coullier, very old, and I picked it up for a song.”
“And the name of the man?”
“It is Simon Serpente.”
“Who was he?”
“What! you have never heard of Simon Serpente—ah, but I forgot, you
are, no doubt, fresh to the West Indies. Well, monsieur, Simon Serpente
was a devil—He was a man all the same—”
Here Sagesse nodded as though he knew all about Simon Serpente.
“But,” continued Jaques, “he was all the same a devil. We have had a
good many devils in these parts in the old days, but Simon out-Heroded
them all. He was one of the last of the pirates and the worst. Kidd,
Horne, Singleton were not so bad as him. What do you say, Monsieur le
Capitaine?”
“O, from all accounts he was a tough man,” said Sagesse. “I’ve never
held with these cut-throat scoundrels, if they’d lived in my day I’d
have rooted them out if I’d been in power. The government could have
done it then, only they were bribed. Don’t tell me, the governors in
those days grew fat on pirates.”
“That is true,” said Jaques, “and Serpente kept his head out of the
noose more than once by gilding it, all the same, Serpente was feared
for himself, they said he was not a man, they said that no one could
kill him and that when he departed this life he would have to die by
his own hand, people imagined that he brought bad luck to anyone who
crossed his path or at whom he looked crookedly.”
“All that is women’s talk,” said Sagesse, “there is no such thing as
bad luck—or devil for the matter of that—go on.”
“Well,” said Jaques, “if there is no such thing as bad luck, at all
events, Serpente did not bring good luck and he got such a name for
being the Devil himself that he made men frightened of him, even the
fellows of his own stamp.
“He’d been pirating for years and he’d made a very large fortune, no
one knew where he had hidden it, wind got about that he had an island
of his own somewhere in the Caribbean but no one ever tried to find it,
for, I tell you quite plainly, that had his treasure been lying on the
beach down there, people would have let it lie—”
“Fools,” said Sagesse.
“Perhaps so, but, all the same, I doubt if I would have cared to meddle
with it myself. People said it was the Devil’s treasure and that it
was well-guarded—I am not so sure that they were fools either. I
know Monsieur le Capitaine, you are sceptical on these points, but
I have seen bad effects following upon money got by force and blood
and inherited. Anyhow, the money of Simon Serpente I would not have
touched. Dieu! the things that man was credited with I would not speak
of, even before you, and so he went through life till all at once he
gave up pirating. It was a most extraordinary ending to his piracy
too, for he fell foul of Laropé off Matanzas. Laropé, you must know,
was a brother pirate, his ship was the _Golden-Shell_, Serpente’s ship
was the _Puerto Mexico_, both ships had been chasing a brigantine when
Serpente signalled Laropé to haul off, that the prize was his, as he
had sighted it first; Laropé refused, and the next thing he knew, was
that his maintop mast had been shot away.
“Then, forgetting the brigantine, the two pirates closed. It was off
Matanzas and the shore was crowded with people watching, they said
that the guns could be heard at Havana, the wind being from the east.
The upshot was that Serpente laid the _Puerto Mexico_ alongside the
_Golden-Shell_, boarded her, put every man to death _and hanged Laropé
from his own main yard for a pirate_.
“Then Serpente, leaving the _Golden-Shell_ to float derelict, sailed
away in the direction of Cape Sable. He never hoisted the black flag
again and the next thing we hear about him is that he turned his ship
into a slaver. Turned respectable, so to speak.
“Men no longer feared him so much now. They said that if he was really
a devil he would not have turned over a new leaf. They began to
remember his crimes and a movement was set on foot against him.
“He heard this, but he did not seem to mind, putting it down most
likely, to idle talk, till one day definite news came to him as he was
leaving the American coast with a cargo of slaves that a corvette was
out against him and that when he was caught he would be hanged.
“Surely enough, two days out from port, he sighted a corvette and she
chased him. The _Puerto Mexico_ could give heels to anything in those
waters, and by sundown the corvette was only showing her topsails above
the horizon and by next dawn she was gone; but Serpente knew that all
was over with him in these seas. The Devil had branded him with such
a face and form that he could not hope to hide himself, so he perhaps
made sail for that island of his where he had placed his treasure—at
all events he was never seen again.”
“Ah, _Mon Dieu!_” suddenly cried Gaspard. He rose to his feet and went
over to the picture on the wall.
Of a sudden it had flashed upon him where he had seen the frame-work of
that face, that contorted form—the hideous skull on the island, the
bones, could they have been the remains of Simon Serpente?
The thing seemed madly improbable, till across his mind flashed the
vision of the pouch and belt, with the initials S. S. on the buckle.
Then he felt, on a sudden, physically ill.
The hideous demon of the picture had, then, entered into his life, he
could not doubt that the skeleton was that of Serpente and that the
money in the belt was that of Serpente.
And he had warred with Yves over that money and he had killed Yves.
For a moment he saw Evil in all its horror and the tenacious clutch
which Evil has upon life. To look at this hideous monkey-man was bad
enough, but to feel that you were his inheritor, and that, quarrelling
over this inheritance, you had killed your friend, was beyond words
shocking.
It is so seldom that God gives us an objective view of evil, that the
sight when it comes is prodigious and soul-shaking.
Gaspard looked at the picture of the man whose money had soiled his
hands. This man, dead long years ago, Anisette, living, but thousands
of miles away, these two were of the same brand, belonged to the
company of evil, they could touch nothing without tainting it and
betraying it to evil, just as they had tainted Gaspard and betrayed him
into the hands of Sagesse.
Controlling his emotion, he turned again to the table from which
Sagesse was now rising to go.
Monsieur Jaques accompanied them through the storehouse, bade them
good-bye, and next moment they were in the brilliant sunshine of the
Place Bertine, Sagesse leading the way to the water’s edge.
“I am going on board to see how things are getting on,” said he, “you
had better come with me and help. We can have something to eat aboard
and you will want to overhaul your cabin—Hi there, bring your boat
along here!”
He called to a longshoreman—a negro, black, and fantastic as a
golliwog—who was paddling his boat along the shore edge, the man
brought the boat up as directed and they stepped in.
The morning had become utterly windless, and the sea like a mirror.
Away out towards Dominica, a becalmed, inter-island schooner lay
helpless, the snow-white sails casting a mile-long reflection on the
water, the three-master which had been getting her anchor up had
scarcely filled her sails when the calm fell, striking the life out of
her. St. Pierre, coloured houses and motionless palms, stood fronting
the blue, and passionately burning sea. It was the scenery of a most
vivid dream, such infinities of colour and light and silence cast on
the mind the unreality of mirage. The very sounds from the city and the
shipping in the bay were dream sounds, voices of visionary sailors,
murmurs from lotus-land.
Even the old _Belle Arlésienne_, that hag of the ocean, was touched by
the magic of the day. Masts and spars and rigging, sun-blistered sides,
all were reflected in the mirror of the harbour whilst her copper
shewed up through the emerald-tinted shadows of the water; and the
southern weeds and strips of fuci growing from the copper waved as if
blown by a faint wind.
The cargo was coming out as fast as winches worked by hand could lift
it, Jules was overseeing the work and he cast down the ladder for them
to come on board. Sagesse when he reached the deck, looked around to
see how things were going, then he entered the deck-house followed by
Gaspard.
“You’ll take the same cabin,” said Sagesse, pointing to the dog hole on
the starboard side, “I’ll tell Jules to get one of the niggers to clear
it out for you, there’s a lot of old truck there that wants shifting
and it will give you more room, you won’t have much gear to bring on
board, I expect.”
“Not much—you say you are starting in three days, to-day is Tuesday—”
“I start on Friday.”
“Ah, yes, on Friday—well, it seems to me that is not a very good day
to start on.”
“_Cordieu!_” cried Sagesse, suddenly shewing irritation, “what sort of
old woman’s talk is that. What is wrong with Friday?”
Gaspard leaned against a bulkhead with his arms folded, he had scarcely
spoken a word since leaving Jaques’ store and Sagesse had noticed his
silence.
“I do not know what is wrong with Friday, but I do know that with a
whole week to choose from, I would choose some other day, especially
starting on an expedition of this sort. However, you can choose what
day you like. I have only one question to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“Will you release me from the business and get someone else to take my
place?”
Sagesse rapped out a laugh, took his seat at the table, folded his arms
and, leaning over his folded arms, stared at his companion.
He did not speak for a moment. He seemed trying to read Gaspard’s
innermost thoughts. Then “No,” he cried, “a hundred times no, you are
part of the business, you gave your word, and now you want to back
out—I find this morning my plans betrayed to this cursed Seguin. I say
nothing about that; but this I say, you come with me or I will take you
along with a member of La Garde Royale, we will hunt for the remains
of a gentleman who was killed—we will look for his clothing and his
bones. We will—” Sagesse stopped as Gaspard, leaving the bulkhead,
took a seat at the table right opposite to him.
“You will do a lot,” said Gaspard, “if I take you by the throat and
drag you out on deck and fling you into the harbour like the carrion
you are. I have given you my word to go with you, on your cursed
expedition, and go I will. Let no more be said. You talk of hunting for
bones, you will find them. Skeleton Island ought to be the name of that
place and if you don’t leave your own skeleton there you will be lucky.”
“Threats!” cried Sagesse, making as if to rise from the table.
“Threats—I never threaten and I am not threatening you now. I say you
will be lucky if you don’t leave your bones behind you for the place
is cursed—see you here—”
He leaned across the table facing Sagesse, and, lowering his
voice—“See you here, I told you how I fought with a man out there and
how, by accident, I killed him; well, I did not tell you all—after he
was dead things happened.”
“Yes?”
“Even before he was dead I did not like the place, that ship down in
the water seemed to me the devil’s own ship, no one ever saw a ship
like that before, she was like an old drowning corpse and then all of
a sudden just at sundown, she came to life, lit up as though she were
hung with lamps—”
“Phosphorus,” said Sagesse.
“It was not, it was just the light in the sky, God’s good sunlight,
but I have never seen such a thing before. Well, what happened next
day? I killed my friend, I flung my knife at him, but I did not mean to
kill, no, but the devil who lives on that island, took care that the
knife did its work. Next day, as I was standing on the reef, looking
out for ships, I felt someone standing behind me. There was no one to
be seen but there was someone there, the very gulls in that place are
not right, _Bon Dieu_, they shout at one—then, in the night someone
beat a drum close to my tent—I nearly left my reason behind in that
place—well, now, listen, I escaped, I said to myself, ‘never will I go
back there,’ look at my luck. I meet you. I take too much rum, I talk
to you and shew you that cursed gold, and what’s the result? Well, I’m
going back, against my will—”
“To make your fortune against your will,” said Sagesse with a sneer,
“and you call that bad luck.”
“Fortune,” cried Gaspard, echoing the sneering tone of the other, “and
you expect to take a fortune from that place?”
“If it is there, I will take it.”
“I tell you if it were lying on the beach, you will not take it.”
“And who will prevent me?”
“There is one there who will prevent you.”
“And who is he?”
“Simon Serpente.”
Sagesse looked at his companion as if doubting his reason.
“Simon Serpente.”
“Yes, in the last few hours I have discovered whose ship that is lying
there in the water, and whose money that was we found in the belt. I
told you there was a skeleton by the money; well, see here, the skull
wasn’t bigger than that.” He held his hands together as if clasping
lightly the head of a child, “and it was not a right skull, why, I said
to Yves, ‘Well, he must have been a beauty, the fellow this belonged
to,’ then the bones were not the bones of an ordinary man, the minute
I set eyes on that picture of Serpente, I said to myself, ‘I have seen
that thing before, but where?’ It wasn’t till Monsieur Jaques told
me his story, that I recognised the truth of the thing and that the
skeleton was the skeleton of Serpente.”
“Rubbish,” replied Sagesse, “you are full up of fo’csle fancies;
Serpente—I don’t believe myself a quarter I have heard about the
chap—you talk like some old Creole woman. If Serpente ever lived, he
died in some grog shop, like the rest of his sort, filled with balloon
juice; or got knocked on the head in some fight down a back alley—”
“One moment—I shewed you the belt and the pouch which I brought from
the island; on the buckle of the belt two letters were scratched, you
examined them yourself—what were they?”
Sagesse started in his chair. He had cast his memory back.
“_Cordieu!_” cried he, “I remember now.”
“What were the letters?”
“By my faith, it’s strange, S. S. It would be the fellow’s initials.”
“Just so.”
“Simon Serpente.”
“Just so.”
“You did not scratch those letters yourself?”
Gaspard laughed.
“Did I know at that time anything about Serpente?”
“That is true.”
Sagesse’s face had flushed, he sat with his fingers drumming on the
table and his eyes fixed on his fingers.
He seemed plunged in reverie of an exciting nature, then, suddenly
recovering himself, he brought his great fist down with a bang on the
table.
“That’s luck—one can’t doubt—He went to his hive—He’d have been
making for Europe, something happened to his ship and sunk it, who
knows what, but one may swear that he left his bones close to his
money.”
Then to Gaspard: “Can’t you see?”
“What?”
“The gold, it’s there as sure as I am here.”
“I am certain of that.”
“Then what are you grumbling about, _Mordieu_, you look as though you
had lost a fortune instead of having found one.”
“Perhaps it would be better to lose a fortune than find one like that.
Have it as you will, though, but at least remember my words if anything
should happen.”
“And what may they be, those words of yours?” asked Sagesse rising,
going to the locker, and pouring himself out a dram.
“Just this, there’s a curse on that place as sure as my name is Gaspard
Cadillac, and the man who goes hunting there for treasure will find
more than he expects.”
Sagesse drank off his dram.