THE SKULLS
One of the negroes, working amidst the bushes, gave a cry, stooped,
picked up something, and held it aloft. It was a skull.
“_Ma foi!_” said Sagesse, taking the arm of Gaspard and leading him
towards the spot where the negro stood with the skull still raised in
air. “Skeleton Island, as you once called this place, does not seem
amiss as a name.”
Gaspard, pale to the lips, did not answer. He advanced alongside of
Sagesse; he dared not draw back or shew emotion, as the whole of the
landing party were trooping around to see what was amidst the bushes.
Besides, he had killed Yves accidentally, so he told himself. Why
should he falter at the sight of his bones?
But no logic could veil the horror of the thing. To see before you the
skull of a man to whom you have talked, with whom you have worked side
by side, with whom you have jested, and to know that the skull is your
handiwork, your terrible _chef-d’oeuvre_, that but for you it would be
clothed in flesh and filled with soul; that is the most tragic sight on
which the gaze of man can fall.
“_Mon Dieu!_” said Sagesse, taking the thing from the hands of the
negro. “This must then be the skull of the man who landed here with you
and whom you left dead—what was his name, do you say?”
“Yves.”
“_Ah, oui_, Yves—” He stirred amidst the bushes with his foot. “And
here are Monsieur Yves’ bones. He has soon become a skeleton, Monsieur
Yves, but I have seen a man become a skeleton in the tropics in a week.
The crabs, the larvae, the sun, all help in the work.” He stooped down
and picked up a tobacco-box and a seaman’s belt with knife attached.
“Why, what is this? He had not drawn his knife!”
“He had drawn it,” said Gaspard, “but I picked it up and put it back in
its sheath.”
The onlookers knew nothing of the tragedy under these words, or of
the veiled accusation in the words of Sagesse; but they noticed that
Gaspard was shivering like a man with ague.
“Well,” said Sagesse, “we will keep the belt and knife as mementoes of
Monsieur Yves. Here, Jules, take them back to the ship with you when
you go, and get a spade and dig a hole in the sand for these bones.”
He turned away, and the men resumed the work of unlading and storing
the provisions and gear. By eight bells, noon, everything was
completed; the quarterboat was dragged up high on the beach and ready
for carting across the islet, and the hands knocked off for dinner.
Sagesse and Gaspard ate apart from the others, under the shade of a
sail that had been especially rigged for them and would form their
tent at night. The white sand near the bushes shewed traces of having
been turned over with a spade where the bones of Yves had been buried.
Gaspard saw the place, but he did not mind—the treasure-fever had
cast everything else to a distance; things seemed strange that
were familiar; he had forgotten Sagesse’s disheartening words; his
imagination saw the sands covered with bags of dollars and bullion
cases; he laughed as he ate. But Sagesse did not laugh, scarcely spoke,
and when the meal was over, drew a cigar from his pocket and lit it.
He was sitting in the shadow of the canvas; the sands and the blue sea
lay before him. On the sand just before the tent the palm-top shadows
were beginning to crawl—it was one o’clock.
As he sat like this, listening to the chanty of the negroes, who were
beginning to haul the boat across the island, of a sudden he made an
exclamation and struck his knee with his hand.
An idea had evidently occurred to him. He called to Gaspard, who had
risen and was walking up and down on the sand outside.
Gaspard approached.
“Well,” said he, “what is it?”
“An idea,” said the Captain. “We have come here, but we have not
observed etiquette.”
“Ah, what do you say?” asked Gaspard, who had heard the word in the
course of his life, but did not know the meaning.
“We have not called on the proprietor of the place.”
“The proprietor?”
“Simon Serpente.”
“Ah! I had forgotten.”
Sagesse rose to his feet and took Gaspard’s arm.
“Come,” said he, “let’s go and hunt for the gentleman’s remains. It
would be curious, at all events, to see them. You know where you saw
them last?”
“Perfectly,” replied Gaspard, leading the way across the bushes.
The boat was being hauled along on rollers over a path cut through
the bushes, and the pulley-haul chanty of the negroes crossed with the
crying of the gulls:
“_A Fort de France. Ay ho!
A Fort de France. Ay ho!_”
and from the gulls, wearily on the wind:
“Yves—Yves—Yves!”
“It was near here,” said Gaspard.
They had come to the little rise in the ground amidst the bushes, and
sure enough his foot, taking its next step forward, struck something
hard and hollow.
He bent down and picked it up. It was the skull which was unlike any
other skull, either of man or beast.
Sagesse held the thing in his hand for a moment as he glanced round
him. At his feet, dimly through the branches of the bay-cedar bushes,
he could see the bones of Serpente shining white, half revealed, half
hidden.
Then, flinging the skull into the air and catching it again, he burst
into a fit of laughter. In a trice his depression had vanished.
_“Mordieu!”_ said Gaspard, “you seem pleased.” “Perhaps. It is as if
this thing had said to me, ‘You are wrong. The treasure is on board the
ship. Stretch out your hand, my friend, and take it.’”
He cast the skull amidst the bushes and turned to superintend the
negroes hauling the boat to the northern beach.