Midnight, a winter night, black as Hades, with great wind and whipping
rain. By the side of the Bidassoa, in the midst of a confused extent of
ground with treacherous soil that evokes ideas of chaos, in slime that
their feet penetrate, men are carrying boxes on their shoulders and,
walking in the water to their knees, come to throw them into a long
thing, blacker than night, which must be a bark--a suspicious bark
without a light, tied near the bank.
It is again Itchoua's band, which this time will work by the river. They
have slept for a few moments, all dressed, in the house of a receiver
who lives near the water, and, at the needed hour, Itchoua, who never
closes but one eye, has shaken his men; then, they have gone out with
hushed tread, into the darkness, under the cold shower propitious to
smuggling.
On the road now, with the oars, to Spain whose fires may be seen at a
distance, confused by the rain. The weather is let loose; the shirts of
the men are already wet, and, under the caps pulled over their eyes, the
wind slashes the ears. Nevertheless, thanks to the vigor of their
arms, they were going quickly and well, when suddenly appeared in the
obscurity something like a monster gliding on the waters. Bad business!
It is the patrol boat which promenades every night. Spain's customs
officers. In haste, they must change their direction, use artifice, lose
precious time, and they are so belated already.
At last they have arrived without obstacle near the Spanish shore, among
the large fishermen's barks which, on stormy nights, sleep there on
their chains, in front of the “Marine” of Fontarabia. This is the
perilous instant. Happily, the rain is faithful to them and falls still
in torrents. Lowered in their skiff to be less visible, having ceased
to talk, pushing the bottom with their oars in order to make less noise,
they approach softly, softly, with pauses as soon as something has
seemed to budge, in the midst of so much diffuse black, of shadows
without outlines.
Now they are crouched against one of these large, empty barks and almost
touching the earth. And this is the place agreed upon, it is there that
the comrades of the other country should be to receive them and to
carry their boxes to the receiving house--There is nobody there,
however!--Where are they?--The first moments are passed in a sort of
paroxysm of expectation and of watching, which doubles the power of
hearing and of seeing. With eyes dilated, and ears extended, they watch,
under the monotonous dripping of the rain--But where are the Spanish
comrades? Doubtless the hour has passed, because of this accursed custom
house patrol which has disarranged the voyage, and, believing that the
undertaking has failed this time, they have gone back--
Several minutes flow, in the same immobility and the same silence. They
distinguish, around them, the large, inert barks, similar to floating
bodies of beasts, and then, above the waters, a mass of obscurities
denser than the obscurities of the sky and which are the houses, the
mountains of the shore--They wait, without a movement, without a word.
They seem to be ghosts of boatmen near a dead city.
Little by little the tension of their senses weakens, a lassitude comes
to them with the need of sleep--and they would sleep there, under this
winter rain, if the place were not so dangerous.
Itchoua then consults in a low voice, in Basque language, the two
eldest, and they decide to do a bold thing. Since the others are not
coming, well! so much the worse, they will go alone, carry to the house
over there, the smuggled boxes. It is risking terribly, but the idea is
in their heads and nothing can stop them.
“You,” says Itchoua to Ramuntcho, in his manner which admits of no
discussion, “you shall be the one to watch the bark, since you have
never been in the path that we are taking; you shall tie it to the
bottom, but not too solidly, do you hear? We must be ready to run if the
carbineers arrive.”
So they go, all the others, their shoulders bent under the heavy loads,
the rustling, hardly perceptible, of their march is lost at once on the
quay which is so deserted and so black, in the midst of the monotonous
dripping of the rain. And Ramuntcho, who has remained alone, crouches
at the bottom of the skiff to be less visible becomes immovable again,
under the incessant sprinkling of the rain, which falls now regular and
tranquil.
They are late, the comrades--and by degrees, in this inactivity and this
silence, an irresistible numbness comes to him, almost a sleep.
But now a long form, more sombre than all that is sombre, passes by him,
passes very quickly,--always in this same absolute silence which is the
characteristic of these nocturnal undertakings: one of the large Spanish
barks!--Yet, thinks he, since all are at anchor, since this one has no
sails nor oars--then, what?--It is I, myself, who am passing!--and he
has understood: his skiff was too lightly tied, and the current, which
is very rapid here, is dragging him:--and he is very far away, going
toward the mouth of the Bidassoa, toward the breakers, toward the sea--
An anxiety has taken hold of him, almost an anguish--What will he
do?--What complicates everything is that he must act without a cry of
appeal, without a word, for, all along this coast, which seems to be the
land of emptiness and of darkness, there are carbineers, placed in
an interminable cordon and watching Spain every night as if it were a
forbidden land--He tries with one of the long oars to push the bottom
in order to return backward;--but there is no more bottom; he feels only
the inconsistency of the fleeting and black water, he is already in the
profound pass--Then, let him row, in spite of everything, and so much
for the worse--!
With great trouble, his forehead perspiring, he brings back alone
against the current the heavy bark, worried, at every stroke of the oar,
by the small, disclosing grating that a fine ear over there might so
well perceive. And then, one can see nothing more, through the rain
grown thicker and which confuses the eyes; it is dark, dark as in the
bowels of the earth where the devil lives. He recognizes no longer the
point of departure where the others must be waiting for him, whose ruin
he has perhaps caused; he hesitates, he waits, the ear extended, the
arteries beating, and he hooks himself, for a moment's reflection, to
one of the large barks of Spain--Something approaches then, gliding with
infinite precaution on the surface of the water, hardly stirred: a human
shadow, one would think, a silhouette standing:--a smuggler, surely,
since he makes so little noise! They divine each other, and, thank God!
it is Arrochkoa; Arrochkoa, who has untied a frail, Spanish skiff to
meet him--So, their junction is accomplished and they are probably saved
all, once more!
But Arrochkoa, in meeting him, utters in a wicked voice, in a voice
tightened by his young, feline teeth, one of those series of insults
which call for immediate answer and sound like an invitation to fight.
It is so unexpected that Ramuntcho's stupor at first immobilizes him,
retards the rush of blood to his head. Is this really what his friend
has just said and in such a tone of undeniable insult?--
“You said?”
“Well!” replies Arrochkoa, somewhat softened and on his guard, observing
in the darkness Ramuntcho's attitudes. “Well! you had us almost caught,
awkward fellow that you are!--”
The silhouettes of the others appear in another bark.
“They are there,” he continues. “Let us go near them!”
And Ramuntcho takes his oarsman's seat with temples heated by anger,
with trembling hands--no--he is Gracieuse's brother; all would be lost
if Ramuntcho fought with him; because of her he will bend the head and
say nothing.
Now their bark runs away by force of oars, carrying them all; the trick
has been played. It was time; two Spanish voices vibrate on the black
shore: two carbineers, who were sleeping in their cloaks and whom the
noise has awakened!--And they begin to hail this flying, beaconless
bark, not perceived so much as suspected, lost at once in the universal,
nocturnal confusion.
“Too late, friends,” laughs Itchoua, while rowing to the uttermost.
“Hail at your ease now and let the devil answer you!”
The current also helps them; they go into the thick obscurity with the
rapidity of fishes.
There! Now they are in French waters, in safety, not far, doubtless,
from the slime of the banks.
“Let us stop to breathe a little,” proposes Itchoua.
And they raise their oars, halting, wet with perspiration and with rain.
They are immovable again under the cold shower, which they do not
seem to feel. There is heard in the vast silence only the breathing of
chests, little by little quieted, the little music of drops of water
falling and their light rippling. But suddenly, from this bark which was
so quiet, and which had no other importance than that of a shadow hardly
real in the midst of so much night, a cry rises, superacute, terrifying:
it fills the emptiness and rents the far-off distances--It has come from
those elevated notes which belong ordinarily to women only, but with
something hoarse and powerful that indicates rather the savage male;
it has the bite of the voice of jackals and it preserves, nevertheless,
something human which makes one shiver the more; one waits with a sort
of anguish for its end, and it is long, long, it is oppressive by its
inexplicable length--It had begun like a stag's bell of agony and now it
is achieved and it dies in a sort of laughter, sinister and burlesque,
like the laughter of lunatics--
However, around the man who has just cried thus in the front of the
bark, none of the others is astonished, none budges. And, after a few
seconds of silent peace, a new cry, similar to the first, starts from
the rear, replying to it and passing through the same phases,--which are
of a tradition infinitely ancient.
And it is simply the “irrintzina”, the great Basque cry which has been
transmitted with fidelity from the depth of the abyss of ages to the men
of our day, and which constitutes one of the strange characteristics of
that race whose origins are enveloped in mystery. It resembles the cry
of a being of certain tribes of redskins in the forests of America;
at night, it gives the notion and the unfathomable fright of primitive
ages, when, in the midst of the solitudes of the old world, men with
monkey throats howled.
This cry is given at festivals, or for calls of persons at night in the
mountains, and especially to celebrate some joy, some unexpected good
fortune, a miraculous hunt or a happy catch of fish in the rivers.
And they are amused, the smugglers, at this game of the ancestors; they
give their voices to glorify the success of their undertaking, they
yell, from the physical necessity to be compensated for their silence of
a moment ago.
But Ramuntcho remains mute and without a smile. This sudden savagery
chills him, although he has known it for a long time; it plunges him
into dreams that worry and do not explain themselves.
And then, he has felt to-night once more how uncertain and changing is
his only support in the world, the support of that Arrochkoa on whom
he should be able to count as on a brother; audacity and success at the
ball-game will return that support to him, doubtless, but a moment of
weakness, nothing, may at any moment make him lose it. Then it seems to
him that the hope of his life has no longer a basis, that all vanishes
like an unstable chimera.