THE PASSING OF SAGESSE
He must have fallen asleep as he knelt, for when he regained
consciousness he had no memory of having lain down. Yet he was lying on
his side amidst the bushes, the day was broad, the sun shining, the sky
without a cloud, though still swept by the rushing wind.
He remembered all that had passed clearly and distinctly and the
miracle of that blue sky above him, after the black and howling chaos
of the night, filled his heart with thankfulness untold.
He rose to his feet. His clothes were stiff with sea-salt, his eyes
half-blinded by the light. Then he cried out in astonishment. The
island, under the sun, and surrounded by the racing amethyst of the
sea, lay glittering white as frost. It was sea-salt from the spray
of the night before. The palm trees were no longer there. There was
nothing to be seen but the winter-white bushes beneath the burning sun.
Bodies were washing ashore on the beach close to him, but he scarcely
glanced at them, the desolation before him held him motionless and the
knowledge that everything was blown away, provisions, tent, everything!
He crossed to the southern beach. There lay the palms, snapped off
and dashed into the sand; a little mound just by the sea edge drew
him towards it; it was the case of provisions. Hurled along by the
wind, it had struck a lump of coral and been sanded over; it had been
shaken almost to pieces and a few blows with his heel burst the staves
apart. It was packed with tins of American preserved meat, such as are
exported especially to the West Indies. He haggled a tin open with his
knife and set to on its contents. As he ate he saw something tangled in
the fronds of one of the broken palms. He came to it, kicked the sand
aside and found the bag of biscuit. Things were not, then, so bad; but
his mind was so dazed and benumbed that he scarcely felt satisfaction
at the sight of the food and the knowledge that for a time, at least,
he was saved from starvation. He stood chewing the meat and gazing
about him, as an animal might gaze on finding itself in a strange place.
Ever since his first landing upon it with Yves, the island had seemed
possessed of some diabolical presence. Yet on looking back, there was
nothing to be perceived but just an ordinary and logical chain of
events. With the exception of finding the gold and the coral ship in
the lagoon, all the events, even the killing of Yves, came within the
province of ordinary sequence. Yet how sinister were they, taken as
a whole, from the first glimpse of the ship in the water to the last
glimpse of _La Belle Arlésienne_ hurled to her death by the waves.
He was thinking nothing of this as he stood chewing the food and gazing
about him. The satisfaction of his hunger was all that troubled him for
the moment; then he sought the little spring amidst the bushes, and
drank.
He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours, and now the food he
had taken made him feel drowsy, heavy with weariness. He came to the
blown-down palms, made what shelter he could from the sun with their
fronds, lay down beside them and fell asleep.
When he awoke some hours later, his mind was clear and his first
thought was of Sagesse. So strange a thing is the human mind that here,
cast away, marooned on this desolate spot without a tent to shelter
him or a soul to share his loneliness, his first sensation on fully
regaining his faculties was one of triumph. Sagesse had gone under,
that hateful mind, perfidious and dark, would trouble him no more. He
was revenged. He rose to his feet and shook the sand from his clothes.
The wind was still blowing strong, but the sea had fallen. The gulls
had not returned, and the only sounds in all that blue and breezy world
were the sounds of the wind and the breaking waves. The frost-white
glitter of the bay-cedar bushes lent an extra touch of brilliancy to
the scene. Never had he seen the island like this, sea-dashed and
wind-blown, surrounded with tumultuous life.
He crossed over to the northern beach. He wished to see what he could
of the wreck, but even before he was half way across he could see that
nothing remained of _La Belle Arlésienne_ but a few spars washing about
in the lagoon water, where ship of wood and ship of coral lay locked
together in ruin.
But things were washing ashore on the full tide—black things to
make one shudder, forms with limbs outspread, looking like enormous
jet-black starfish, forms locked together in a deadly embrace as though
they had gone to their death fighting.
Then as Gaspard stepped from the bushes he saw with a thrill of horror
that the sands were in motion. Thousands upon thousands of little crabs
were congregating to the feast; he trod on them as he walked, and
amidst them, like moving rocks, giant crabs from the eastern beach were
advancing like captains of this army of destruction.
He would have fled the hateful place had he not noticed a form that
the sea had cast up almost free of the waves.
It was the body of Sagesse.
The man of wisdom and resource lay on his side, huddled up as if
asleep. He was fully dressed. Horrible though the place was and
dreadful with death, not all the horror in the world could have
prevented Gaspard from advancing towards the body of Sagesse. It drew
him towards it against his will, as if by some mesmeric influence.
The right hand of the Captain lying across his chest had upon one of
the fingers something that glittered in the sun like a star. It was
a diamond, enormous and lovely with light, set in an old-fashioned
ring. It would have graced the crown of an emperor; it would have held
Gaspard fascinated had not another object held him breathless. From the
muffler around the neck of Sagesse protruded the head of a snake. Two
bright red burning eyes flashed in the sun, the thing seemed furious
at being disturbed; a moment more and one would have expected it to
wriggle from its concealment and strike, but Gaspard feared it less
even than he had feared the _fer de lance_ of the Place du Fort. He
knelt down beside Sagesse, heedless of the crabs now surrounding him,
removed the muffler from his neck and then removed the snake. It was of
solid gold, flexible, one of those antique bracelets made to wind round
and cling to a woman’s arm. The flat portion of the head was formed
by a quadrille of flat sapphires, the eyes were pigeon-blood rubies.
Leaving the extraordinary beauty of the workmanship aside, the stones
alone were worth a little fortune.
Then Gaspard knew that the captain had indeed found the treasure of
Simon Serpente, and, seeing shipwreck before him, had sorted out the
most valuable things in a wild attempt to save them with his own
wretched life. With the sweat breaking out on his forehead at the
possibilities before him, he flung the serpent of gold on the ground
before searching the body. It fell on the swarming crabs. He picked
it up and flung it round his own neck. Then he noticed that his hand
was bleeding; it had been nipped by one of the vermin which were now
crawling up on the body of Sagesse, as the Lilliputians swarmed on
Gulliver. Seized with fury, he sprang to his feet and kicked the brutes
hither and thither, stamped on them, crushed them. He might as well
have stamped on water advancing from an overflowing dam; the clicking
and rustling hordes swarmed on.
He flung himself on his knees again beside the body, seized the hand
with the ring, drew the jewel off and put it in his pocket. He scarcely
noticed that a crab was clinging to the hand as he flung it aside. The
left coat pocket of Sagesse was bulging. He thrust his hand in and drew
out a knotted handkerchief; it chinked like a bag of marbles, and from
a corner a piece of broken gold fell out. It was part of a brooch. He
did not stay to investigate further; the handkerchief held treasure.
He thrust it into his pocket and went on. There was a pocket-book in
the breast pocket of the coat, in the other pockets nothing of value.
He opened the waistcoat; he tore open the shirt; nothing more. Wiping
the sweat from his brow, he was about to rise to his feet when he
remembered that he had not examined the left hand for rings.
He pushed the body over.
The left hand of Sagesse was closed tight on something. The _rigor
mortis_ was just passing, and Gaspard had no difficulty in unlocking
the fingers from the treasure they contained. It was a pearl, a lovely
milk-white pearl, large almost as a pigeon’s egg. Why he had clung to
this thing especially, whether from superstition or not, who can say?
Or was it a pearl not belonging to Serpente’s treasure at all? A pearl
of the lagoon that by some extraordinary chance the drowning man
had seized upon unknowingly in his struggles? One might almost have
imagined this to be the case, for this thing was virginal as the sea
and had evidently never been set or worn by mortal.
Who can say? But so the captain of _La Belle Arlésienne_ had gone to
his Maker, clasping this emblem of purity in his hand, almost a parable
on the mighty truth that each one of us, however evil, has yet, in his
soul, somewhere, a priceless pearl.
Thoughts that never occurred to Gaspard.
He had risen to his feet. In his pockets lay the plunder he had taken
from Sagesse, in his hand the pearl, around his feet the crabs swarming
to their prey.
He was rich.
The sea had given him the riches that other men toil their lives for,
given it to him in one great glittering handful. He seemed standing
before a blinding light. It seemed unthinkable that he who had striven
all his life for a pittance, working now as a sailor before the
mast, now as a slave in the blind alley of the stokehold, it seemed
unthinkable that he should have drawn this tremendous and glittering
prize.
As he stood in the blazing sunshine, the wind blowing his hair about
his eyes, his eyes staring, astonished, fixed, as though he were gazing
at Fortune herself, a black shadow passed over him. It was the shadow
of a cormorant.
Away out across the waves other birds were coming to the feast; the
wreck and the stranded corpses had been signalled for miles across the
sea, for the sea, like the desert, has a watch-tower—the air, and a
watchman who never leaves that tower—eternal Hunger.
The bird cried as it wheeled and the cry brought Gaspard to his senses.
He glanced up, then down at the swarming beach; then, touching his
pocket to make sure that the contents were safe, he turned from the
horrors around him and made towards the southern beach, running.
He wished to be alone with his treasure. He shouted like a boy as he
ran, taking the road through the bushes that Serpente’s sailors had
cut for the boat. The jewelled snake round his throat glittered and
flashed; never was there a more extraordinary picture than this man,
half ragged, his clothes stained with sea-salt, his hair blowing on the
wind, the jewelled serpent around his neck, running and shouting as he
ran to the desolation around him, and with Fortune.
At the place where the palm trees lay prone on the sand he stopped, sat
down, took the serpent of gold from around his throat and placed it on
the sand beside him, and beside it the parcel.
Then from his pocket he took the knotted handkerchief and the ring. He
placed the ring by the pearl and then he unknotted the handkerchief and
poured the contents on the white sand between his legs.