DISASTER
A smoke-coloured band, curious, and like a thin curved cloud, cut the
grey background of sky to eastward. It was in motion. Even as he looked
it changed subtly in shape till now it became a comet of smoke, head
pointing to the island.
Far away to the northeast, another band of smoke, grey and also in
motion, caught his eye.
There was something sinister in these apparitions so strange to the
eye, so perplexing to the mind, so dismal in colour against the dismal
grey of the sky.
What could they be?
The coin he held in his hand was forgotten; unconsciously he put it in
his pocket and, folding his arms, looked.
Now the approaching comet of smoke altered again in form, becoming a
line definite, distinct, and swiftly approaching like an apparition in
a dream.
Ah! what was that—that voice mournful and complaining? In a flash the
meaning of the phenomenon was revealed. They were birds. A vast flock
of gulls, thousands, beating the air as with one wing, crying aloud as
with one voice; then silent, always advancing.
And now the gulls of the island rose clamouring, like a burst of smoke;
in a moment the air was filled with birds, in a moment the oncomers
had joined the island birds, in a moment, all rising as if by common
consent, the feathered thousands took definite form and encircled the
island in a vast moving ring.
The “hush” of their wings sounded like the continuous beating of the
sea on the shore.
Gaspard, with head upturned, gazing at the wonderful sight, saw the
second flight approaching. It joined the others, circled with them,
and then, just as if the moving ring had been bent by a wind, it broke
and in two vast flocks the moving host passed away to westward, became
clouds again, and slowly vanished, leaving the island to silence and
desolation.
There was something tragic in this great migration of birds and in
the utter silence that followed their vanishing. There was something
disturbing in the absolute peace which had taken the whole world into
its keeping.
Close to Gaspard, caught in the branches of the bay-cedar bushes, lay
something white. As he turned his eyes from the western horizon, whence
the great flock had vanished, his eyes caught this white thing, and he
approached it. It was the skull of Serpente, thrown away by Sagesse,
now grinning at the grey sky as though reading there some frightful
joke, some diabolical secret of Nature.
Gaspard turned his eyes from this thing to the distant vessel, caught
in its flight, arrested and held in bondage by the calm. One might have
fancied that the grinning skull drew its mirth from the predicament of
Sagesse. To Gaspard it seemed that the skull was the centre from which
all that silence and desolation of sea and sky radiated, the _quid
obscurum_ at the heart of that peace which was holding the world in its
spell.
He turned to the southern beach and sought the tent. As he entered it
and lay down to rest his aching head, the sea again, moving uneasily,
boomed on the reef to northward and sighed on the sand of the southern
beach. The unrest, the unhappiness that lives in the heart of things,
seemed to speak in that voice.
He turned as he lay and cast himself face downwards with arms
outstretched. Tricked, betrayed, marooned, robbed of the gold for which
he had forgotten her, he remembered now Marie. Sagesse, the treasure,
_La Belle Arlésienne_, all that trash vanished from his mind for a
moment before the vision of the thing he loved.
Had there been the slightest chance of outwitting Sagesse, of regaining
his hold upon the treasure, the fever for revenge and gold would have
held his mind from all else; but he recognized that the game was lost,
and in his desolation he turned to his only thought of comfort. And
here again the game was lost. Love had tricked him just as fortune had
tricked him, and just as cruelly.
To find Marie again he must first find Martinique. Suppose, even, that
a ship were to rescue him; that ship might be bound for any port in
the world but Martinique. He had no money, no trade. To gain enough
to return to St. Pierre he would have to go back to the stokehold,
he would have to work ships across and across the world before his
wretched pay, saved and scraped together, would give him money
sufficient to return with. He might write to M. Seguin, but where in
his wandering life would he get the reply?
It might be months before a ship rescued him; it might be months before
that ship landed him at a port where he could get work; it might be
years before he reached Martinique—and meanwhile, what of Marie? Ah!
the want of money, just a little of that money which the rich find
so burdensome, that want is the curse of the poor, that want is the
essence of the true tragedy of life.
The hunger which poverty imposes on man is nothing to the loneliness
and the separation, the heart-break and the starvation for want of love.
He loved Marie now, with the love that comes after marriage, the love
that has nothing to do with passion. Across separation and disaster
he saw her as she really was, beautiful, single-hearted, loving, and
faithful—and he might never meet her again. To reach her he would have
to journey to all parts of the world, working as a slave in a stokehold
with that ache in his heart, earning _sou_ by _sou_, the money that
would bring him to her—and every moment of separation seemed a year.
Stung suddenly to madness, with the tears upon his face, he left the
tent and sought the beach outside, walking up and down it like a
frenzied creature, cursing, calling out, wild with the petty things
that had him in their grip, the little Fates that had bound him to this
islet as the Lilliputians bound Gulliver. He saw nothing of his own
handiwork in this fate which he cursed; he saw nothing of the grave
faults of mind, the weaknesses, the impetuosities that had flawed his
life, killing Yves, and binding him to the will of Sagesse; he only saw
his Fate and that it was horrid—and he cursed it.
After awhile he paused. A wind had risen and was blowing from the north
across the islet. He recognised that the day had grown suddenly darker
and as he stood wiping the sweat from his brow, confused, and exhausted
with the conflict of thought through which he had passed, he heard a
noise, faint, far away, and indeterminate. It came from the north with
the wind that was now increasing in force. He glanced round at the sky.
All the northern sky was dusky, like hot bronze; it had a solid look,
and even as he gazed some wind of the higher atmosphere set to work
compacting the upper part of this dark zone, ruling it level in one
infinite line. Added to the darkness of the coming storm was the dusk
of evening. The drug must have held him in its spell much longer than
he had thought.
Next moment Gaspard was making across the islet to the northern beach;
when he reached it he stopped, shaded his eyes with both hands, and
looked.
_La Belle Arlésienne_ had got the wind at last. She shewed as if
sketched in grey chalk against the great black wall that the coming
storm had built across the world. Heavens! what a sight was that wall!
It seemed built by plumb-line and square, titanic, immeasurable.
And from behind it came that sound, growing momently more definite, as
though all the hosts of darkness were murmuring together, wild to break
through some hidden door and burst upon the world.
Against this prodigious menace _La Belle Arlésienne_ was moving,
steering N.N.East on the starboard tack. Sagesse had taken in sail, but
in the face of what was coming, not enough, to a sailor’s eye. But no
one knew better than Sagesse that all to southward of him the sea was
full of death, in the form of rocks and shoals; to make an offing was
imperative.
Now the wind was coming in gusts, whipping the foam over the reef, and
the spray in the face of Gaspard, and before the wind the league-long
waves were racing shoreward.
As he looked, as he listened, the great wall seemed gradually to bend
from the top and over it came the rushing wind, and with the wind the
first note of thunder, profound, funereal, and dreamy; less like
thunder than the muffle of muffled drums.
At this moment the setting sun, pale like an appalled spectator,
glanced through the clouds, lit the sea, _La Belle Arlésienne_ and
the advancing wall of storm. It was no longer a wall; it had become
concave, in the form of a breaking wave, and the wave became veiled
with mist, and _La Belle Arlésienne_ blotted out behind the roaring
rain.
Dominating the thunder, the wind, the howling of the storm, the voice
of the rain tore the air as it washed over the sea and then over the
islet, wave-like and solid almost as a wave. It cast Gaspard down
like a great hand and held him half drowned; it released him for half
a second and before he could struggle to his feet the wind hit him
and drove him like a rag amidst the bushes, and the sand of the beach
rushed over him, not as sand but slush, half choking him. He thought
the waves of the sea were upon him, but there were now no waves on the
sea, which was as smooth beneath the wind as a new planed board, and as
white as driven snow.
On his face, now, struggling to rise, he could not; it was as though
a great sheet of iron held him down, and with the first real crash
of thunder, prone on his face, he felt the earth splitting under him
and shouted to the mud beneath him, “The world is gone—the world is
gone!” But the world held fast though now, blow after blow, the gods
seemed smashing at it with mighty hammers, sickening concussions, jets
of light, deafness, blackness, misery, and the iron hand of the wind,
all had fallen upon the world, rending thought to pieces. It could have
lasted but a minute, this first desperate onslaught of the hurricane,
yet to Gaspard it seemed that time had been torn away by the wind, that
he had known eternity.
Now, released partly from the grip of that hateful hand which had
pressed him nearly to death, he struggled to his knees and crawled
further amidst the bushes where they were thickest; here there was
shelter of a sort, the bushes low-growing and firm-rooted made a
bulwark against the wind and the spindrift rushing across the island
like blown white sheets. Again and again the yelling blackness would
be lit by the lightning and the whirling spirals and blankets of spray
above shown up only to vanish in the roaring darkness where the world
seemed fighting for its life with chaos.
Then came stupor; like a man half under the influence of chloroform
the man amidst the bushes, deafened, and blinded and stupefied by
the torment around him, saw visions, and dreamt dreams in which the
blinding lightning flashes lit blue seas and the voice of the wind was
the voices of people.
How long he lay like this it would be impossible to say before raising
himself on his elbow, he returned fully to consciousness.
The great fury of the hurricane had passed; it was still blowing hard
and strong, but the worst was over and the moon was lighting the world
through the rushing clouds. He rose to his feet, but fell on his knees
again immediately. He had eaten nothing during the past twenty-four
hours, and the drug was still weakening him; but in the moment of
rising he had seen a sight surpassing in terror even the fury of the
hurricane, and now amidst the bushes, on hands and knees, motionless
and petrified by the drama before him, he looked.
_La Belle Arlésienne_ was coming ashore, now uplifted on the crest of
a wave, now vanishing in a hollow, dismasted all but for the stump of
the foremast, from which a rag of canvas was wildly flying. _La Belle
Arlésienne_ was being driven to the lagoon by the merciless whip of the
wind.
The hag of the sea had found her master at last; stealth and cunning
could not save her now, nor trickery, nor subterfuge. She had flung
them all away. Like some witch who had worked evil long in silence,
dragged at last shrieking to the gallows, the old barquentine seemed
fighting against her fate.
Her fluttering rags of canvas seemed clawing at the wind; she screamed,
and Gaspard on his knees could hear her screams in the high-pitched
wailing of her crew, the shrill pig-like screaming of negroes hurled
and huddled together, animals waiting for inevitable death.
A moment he saw her held up strong in the moonlight on the crest of
a vast wave; then a cloud drew a skirt of shadow over her and when
the moon broke through again she was gone, deep in the pocket of the
lagoon, over which the thirty-foot waves were rushing shoreward.