I am master of the yacht _Zephire_; at least I was her master. A
hundred fathoms of green water roll over her masts now. Fishes of
monstrous shape feed on our good stores. For anything I know, a brood
of young sea-serpents is at this moment in possession of my hammock.
Let be, I will tell the story of the _Zephire_. Ten years ago an
American vessel lay off the little port of Benevent, in the south of
France. The time was high noon; the month, August. The day was bright.
The sunbeams danced over the white spray and green waves. A boat put
off for the shore. I, Pierre Crepin, sat in the stern and held the
rudder-lines. My heart was full of joy. I had been born in Benevent;
my friends were there--if they were alive. My mother, with good Aunt
Lisette, in the little cottage by the hill-side. My old companions
drinking white wine at "The Three Magpies." All the old faces I knew--
had known from childhood--loved better than anything else in the world.
I could throw a stone to where they sat. I could almost hear them talk.
"Pull, my comrades, pull!" I grow impatient; I, the lost found; I, the
dead returned to life; I, Pierre Crepin, back in Benevent. Who will
believe it? For some time I must seem the ghost of myself. My old
companions will put down their glasses and stare. Then they will till
them to the brim and drink the health of Pierre Crepin, till the
roof-tree of "The Three Magpies" echoes with "Pierre--Pierre Crepin,
welcome back!" And my mother, she will know the footsteps of her son on
the pebbles. She will rush out to fold me to her heart. And good Aunt
Lisette! She is feeble--it will be almost too much for her. And--
The boat's keel grates harshly on the shingle. "Steady!" say the
seamen. I make my adieux tenderly, for they have been too kind to me.
I wring their hands; I leap ashore. They go back to their ship. I turn
my steps first to the little whitewashed cottage on the hill-side.
Is it necessary for me to tell how my mother embraces me. Poor Aunt
Lisette! She knows I am back; but she is not here to welcome me. She
is at rest. At last I have told all. It is night now, and I am free to
go to the kitchen of "The Three Magpies."
There it is. "Mon Dieu!" "Impossible; it is his ghost!" I soon
convince them that it is, indeed, I myself. The news spreads over the
market place. "Pierre Crepin is come back to Benevent. After all, he
is not drowned; he is alive and well." The kitchen of "The Three
Magpies" will not hold the crowd. Antoine, the drawer, cannot pull the
corks fast enough. My eyes fill with tears. The brave fellows are too
good to me. I must tell them my story. Pouches are drawn out; pipes
and cigars are lighted; glasses are tilled for the twentieth time. I
begin my yarn.
You see me, my good friends, safely back in Benevent. It is four years
since I parted from you. The ship in which I sailed from Marseilles was
wrecked on a coral reef. All hands were lost. The last I saw alive was
Marc Debois. He had seized a spar, and was struggling manfully for
life. There are sharks in those seas. The waves ran high, and the foam
of the breakers blinded me. I was safe on the land. I could not help
Marc, but I watched him. A great wave came. It rolled on toward my
feet.
There was a patch of blood on the water, mingling with the white foam of
the breakers, then disappearing. Poor Marc had met his fate. All was
over. I saw him no more. The spar to which he had clung was washed
ashore at my feet. I was alone, wet, cold, wretched. I envied Marc.
Shaking myself, I ran along the shore, to restore to my drenched limbs
heat and life. Then I climbed a precipitous crag--one of a line that
stretched along the shore as far as the eye could see. But I must not
become tedious with my tale.
"Go on, Pierre Crepin!" they all cried.
Well, then, I continued, the island was desolate, uninhabited. There
were fruits and berries, turtles, young birds in nests. Long times of
dry weather under a tropical sun. In this I made a fire day after day
by rubbing sticks together till I could kindle the dry leaves. Then
came seasons of wet of weeks together. In these I had no fire, and had
to subsist on berries and fruits, and the eggs of sea-fowl. I was
there, as it seemed, an age. It was three years. I had long given up
all hope of seeing Benevent or men again. My island was about nine
leagues round. On the highest hill, by the shore, I raised a mast. In
a cleft in it I struck a piece of plank. On the plank I wrote, with
white chalk--
"Au Secours! Pierre Crepin!"
This I renewed as the rains washed out my characters. At last help
came. Unshaven, ragged, unkempt, I was taken on board an American
vessel that had been driven by stress of weather far out of her course.
And I am here.
My narrative ended, I was plied with a thousand questions, and it was
not until mine host closed his doors for the night, and thrust us
good-humouredly into the street, that I was able to bid my friends
good-night, and turn my steps toward my mother's cottage--that cottage
where the dear soul awaited me with the anxiety of a mother who has
mourned her only son as lost. That cottage where the soft bed of my
boyish days, spread for me, with snowy linen, by the kindest of hands,
had been ready for me these three hours. But I was not unattended. My
friends, some dozen of them, would see me home to my mother's door--
would wring her hand in hearty congratulation at my return.
In the morning you may be sure I had plenty of callers. It was like a
_levee_. They began to come before I was up, but my mother would not
suffer that I should be waked. And I, who had not slept in a Christian
bed for years, slept like a top, and slept it out.
I was sitting at my breakfast of cutlets, omelette, and white wine, when
Cecile knocked at the door of the cottage.
"Enter!" said my mother.
"Ah, Cecile!" I cried; "but not the Cecile I left at Benevent when I
went away."
For she was altered. She had grown more matronly. The loveliness of
her girlhood had gone. It had given place to the more mature beauty of
womanhood. What a difference four years makes to a girl!
"Pierre," she cries, "we are _so_ glad to see you back! You bring us
news--the news we all want that I want."
She looked impatiently toward me. Perhaps her eyes expressed more to me
than her words; for her mother was Spanish, and Cecile had her mother's
great, black, saucer eyes, with their long fringe of jet lashes. Still,
her look was not what I had expected to see. She wore sad-coloured
draperies, but she was not in mourning. Her dress was rich, of Lyons
silk, and this surprised me; for her people were poor, and a sailor's
widow is not always too well off at Benevent. Seamen are, not
uncommonly, judges of merchandise. Do we not trade with the Indies, and
a thousand other outlandish places? In this way it came about that I
involuntarily counted up the cost of Cecile's costly habit and rich
lace. But this mental inventory took hardly a second--certainly, less
time than it takes me to tell.
"Cecile," I said, "my poor girl, I wish that I could tell you good news.
Your husband sailed with me. It was his lot to be one of the less
lucky ones. Marc--"
"Is dead!" said Cecile, calmly. "I knew it all along--these three
years. I felt it. Something told me long ago Marc was dead!"
She said this so quietly that I was astonished--perhaps a little
shocked. Sailors' widows in Benevent mourn their husbands' loss for
years. My mother was a sailor's widow ever since I knew her. No offer
of a new ring could ever tempt her to throw aside the old one. She was
true as Love.
I replied, with something of choking in my throat, but with hardness in
my face, "Marc _is_ dead, Cecile! He was drowned!"--for I could not
bring myself to tell this beautiful woman, whom he had loved as only an
honest sailor can love, the story of his fate, as I had told it to the
comrades in the kitchen of "The Three Magpies" the night before. I
desired to spare her this.
"So Marc _is_ dead!" Cecile repeated, impassively. "Dead--as I always
thought and said he was dead! Drowned! You saw it, Pierre?"
"The good God forgive me!" I said, "I saw it!"
As I said before, I held a _levee_ that day in the parlour of my
mother's cottage. It gladdened my eyes, who would have worked my
finger-nails below the quicks to save her from wanting anything--to see
that the good soul was surrounded by the signs of plenty. She had
wanted for nothing. Old Jean had tilled her piece of garden-ground to
some purpose, and had never taken a sou as recompense for his work.
Everybody had been kind to her. It brought tears into my eyes to hear
of it. Her kitchen told a tale of plenty. From the smoke-blackened oak
beams hung hams and flitches of bacon more than one would take the
trouble to count. Bunches of garlic and strings of onions were there in
plenty; and the great black kettle hanging always over the pine-wood
fire, sent forth savoury steams, that made your heart leap into your
mouth. The Widow Crepin's was a _pot-au-feu_ worth eating, I can tell
you. Nor did we fail to wash down our food with draughts of good wine
on every day of the week. I gave a supper that night to some of my
friends. I had not quite forgotten the impression Cecile had made upon
me in the morning. For Marc, the second officer, had been my friend
ever since I could recollect sweetstuff. But we were merry together,
talking of the old times, of my adventures in the desert island, of the
good ship that had brought me safely back to Benevent, and of other
things.
Presently the name of Cecile was mentioned.