THE REVOLVER
Three days later, in a pink and pearl dawn, they passed the Virgin
Islands, their shoals and sand spits.
By eight o’clock the islands were just palms low down on the sea,
swimming in an azure haze; they had vanished completely before noon.
Not a word had been said by Sagesse about Pedro, and Gaspard imagined
that the captain held off the subject under the impression that he
(Gaspard) had forgotten the Porto Rican’s existence.
There was something almost uncanny in this vanishing of a man and the
utter indifference of all on board. Imagination embroidered upon the
situation and asked questions not the less disturbing because they were
unanswerable.
Had the wretched man died in his bunk, delirious from brain fever
following the injury, or had he been flung overboard before death?
The imaginative mind of Gaspard found much to play with in this idea.
He pictured the business done in the small hours of the morning, whilst
he was asleep. He dreamed of it at night.
Pedro became an obsession with him, just as the dead Yves had become an
obsession on the island. What had happened to this man whom he had seen
alive and well, yet who had gone off the ship without a word?
He _knew_ that Pedro had been killed by the blow of the belaying-pin,
just as on the island he had known that Yves was dead amidst the
bushes; but imagination takes little heed of facts once she gets rein,
and incessantly he was haunted by the idea of the vanished man; the
chanty he had been singing in his delirium clung like a ghostly echo to
the ship.
This trouble of the imagination was not eased by the conditions of his
life on board, the absolute idleness and the presence at all times of
Sagesse. He was passing swiftly from dislike to hatred of Sagesse.
On this day of their passing the Virgin Islands his ill-temper and
irritability had come to a crisis, and it was only by keeping away from
his companion that he could hold himself in check. He had been silent
at breakfast, but the Captain did not seem to notice his silence. All
during the morning he had kept as much as possible to himself, smoking,
leaning over the side, watching the indigo-blue water swirling past,
the flakes of foam, the flying-fish, the sun dazzles, the floating
seaweeds. There were tiny fish following _La Belle Arlésienne_ close
to the rudder, as if for protection; sometimes these would dart away
from the ship and back again, needle-bright and swift. A glancing blue
and gold form appeared and hovered for a moment in view; beneath it
appeared what seemed the trace of a sand-spit, vague, misty, and moving
as though to keep pace with the ship. It was a shark, and the blue
and gold angel of the sea was its pilot. They vanished. Sharks do not
follow nigger ships, they say. Gaspard did not know or care; he watched
the depths like a man mesmerised, seeing, scarcely seeing, not caring
what he saw. He was thinking of Marie,—Marie of Morne Rouge, from
whom this cursed ship was taking him moment by moment further away and
against his will.
He was brought back from his thoughts by one bell striking and by the
shadow of the cook bearing dinner from the galley to the deck-house.
Canned beef stewed with carrots formed the repast, with the eternal
bananas of the tropics. Sagesse was hungry, and therefore silent.
Gaspard was silent, but he was not hungry.
The sight of this man, whom he was beginning to loathe, at his food
would have taken his appetite away had he possessed one. The meal went
on in silence, and Sagesse was pushing his plate away, and had reached
out his hand for the bottle to fill his glass, when Gaspard leaned
across the table.
“I counted the crew when I came on board,” said Gaspard, “and it seems
to me that I made a mistake.”
“How so?” asked Sagesse, helping himself from the bottle.
“I counted eleven hands which, with you and me, would make thirteen
souls on board.”
“Well,” said Sagesse, helping himself from the glass, “what of that?”
“Thirteen was an unlucky number.”
“So you believe in that nonsense?”
“Do not you?”
“No.”
“Well, look—what has happened since we started?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“Think!”
Gaspard was working himself up, impulse and imagination were laying
their hands on him; he forgot safety, he forgot Marie, he forgot even
himself in the anger of his soul before this smooth-faced scoundrel,
this cold calculator of chances, this murderer with the soul of a
store-keeper.
“Think!—a man has been lost already off this ship.”
“Indeed?” said Sagesse, his hand falling from his glass to the pocket
of his coat.
“Murdered, _mordieu_!” said the other, who was now white to the lips.
Next moment he had flung himself across the table. He was not a second
too soon. Sagesse had drawn a revolver from his pocket; it was a stupid
act and unlike him, but his strange character, so antagonistic as a
rule to anger and violence, had become infected with the rage of his
vis-a-vis; he felt, perhaps, that Gaspard in surprising his deed had
now a hold upon him, that the crew, bowed by his will as they were,
would, if brought before one of those infernal examining magistrates,
inevitably break down, contradict each other and give him away. Anger,
uppermost in his mind for a second, dictated the attempt to destroy
this witness. But Gaspard was too quick for him. He had seized him by
the wrist with an iron grip, the muzzle of the revolver was pointing to
the roof of the deck-house. The whole thing had happened in a flash,
with scarcely a sound, and had you looked in through the door you might
have fancied the two men were larking. But a second glance would have
shown you that Gaspard, half lying across the table, had seized a knife
in his left hand.
“Drop it,” said Gaspard, “or, _sang-Dieu_, I will drive this through
your heart—assassin!”
Sagesse, whose anger had vanished, released his clutch on the revolver.
It fell on the table, and Gaspard, seizing it, resumed his seat.
Sagesse, rising from his, went quietly to the door, which was half
open, closed it, and turned to his companion.
“We are fools,” he said. “Sit down. I am not coming near you. But to
quarrel like this—we are fools!”
“I may be a fool, but I am not a murderer.”
Sagesse pointed to the knife that had fallen on the table, and laughed
as he re-took his seat.
“Maybe not, but it seems to me you were handy enough with that knife a
moment ago. I did not say you were a fool alone; I said we were fools
quarrelling in the after guard, with a crew like this and treasure
ahead. The _bon Dieu_ only knows if we may not be fighting together
for our lives before long, if we are lucky, and if those black beasts
choose to rise up against us. Do you know that my position here is not
so much the master of a ship as the master of a menagerie? You got
the better of me for a moment. I did not intend to shoot you. I drew
in anger, I gave way for a second to that child’s passion. That was a
fault, but I mastered it. But suppose—look you here—suppose one of
those animals had come in and found us at grips, and you holding me
like that, where would my authority have been? And, I tell you, it is
by authority only that you and I will live through this business, for
the fellows forward have hell in them, and they only want pricking to
let it out.
“You say a man has gone overboard. Well, that is my business, and it
is better that one man should go than that we should have our throats
cut. That fellow was full of mutiny, and I sent him where he’d got
to go sooner or later. That’s my business. And now hand me over that
revolver. Or stay—” He went to his cabin and came back in a moment
with another revolver. He handed it to Gaspard.
“It’s loaded. I brought it for you in case we had trouble with these
fellows. You can take it now and give me back mine.”
Gaspard opened the breech. It was loaded. He handed Sagesse’s weapon
back to him, and Sagesse put it in his pocket.
“Now,” said Sagesse, “let us be friends till this business is over.
That is to say, let us work together, for if we do not, we will pull
nothing out of the fire—and I can tell you this, we have our work cut
out before us.”
He held out his hand, and Gaspard took it; but there was no friendship
in the grip, only policy.