HARDQUANONNE.
The mist was deformed by all sorts of inequalities, bulging out at once
on every point of the horizon, as if invisible mouths were busy puffing
out the bags of wind. The formation of the clouds was becoming ominous.
In the west, as in the east, the sky’s depths were now invaded by the
blue cloud: it advanced in the teeth of the wind. These contradictions
are part of the wind’s vagaries.
The sea, which a moment before wore scales, now wore a skin--such is the
nature of that dragon. It was no longer a crocodile: it was a boa. The
skin, lead-coloured and dirty, looked thick, and was crossed by heavy
wrinkles. Here and there, on its surface, bubbles of surge, like
pustules, gathered and then burst. The foam was like a leprosy. It was
at this moment that the hooker, still seen from afar by the child,
lighted her signal.
A quarter of an hour elapsed.
The skipper looked for the doctor: he was no longer on deck. Directly
the skipper had left him, the doctor had stooped his somewhat ungainly
form under the hood, and had entered the cabin; there he had sat down
near the stove, on a block. He had taken a shagreen ink-bottle and a
cordwain pocket-book from his pocket; he had extracted from his
pocket-book a parchment folded four times, old, stained, and yellow; he
had opened the sheet, taken a pen out of his ink-case, placed the
pocket-book flat on his knee, and the parchment on the pocket-book; and
by the rays of the lantern, which was lighting the cook, he set to
writing on the back of the parchment. The roll of the waves
inconvenienced him. He wrote thus for some time.
As he wrote, the doctor remarked the gourd of aguardiente, which the
Provençal tasted every time he added a grain of pimento to the puchero,
as if he were consulting it in reference to the seasoning. The doctor
noticed the gourd, not because it was a bottle of brandy, but because of
a name which was plaited in the wickerwork with red rushes on a
background of white. There was light enough in the cabin to permit of
his reading the name.
The doctor paused, and spelled it in a low voice,--
“Hardquanonne.”
Then he addressed the cook.
“I had not observed that gourd before; did it belong to Hardquanonne?”
“Yes,” the cook answered; “to our poor comrade, Hardquanonne.”
The doctor went on,--
“To Hardquanonne, the Fleming of Flanders?”
“Yes.”
“Who is in prison?”
“Yes.”
“In the dungeon at Chatham?”
“It is his gourd,” replied the cook; “and he was my friend. I keep it in
remembrance of him. When shall we see him again? It is the bottle he
used to wear slung over his hip.”
The doctor took up his pen again, and continued laboriously tracing
somewhat straggling lines on the parchment. He was evidently anxious
that his handwriting should be very legible; and at length,
notwithstanding the tremulousness of the vessel and the tremulousness of
age, he finished what he wanted to write.
It was time, for suddenly a sea struck the craft, a mighty rush of
waters besieged the hooker, and they felt her break into that fearful
dance in which ships lead off with the tempest.
The doctor arose and approached the stove, meeting the ship’s motion
with his knees dexterously bent, dried as best he could, at the stove
where the pot was boiling, the lines he had written, refolded the
parchment in the pocket-book, and replaced the pocket-book and the
inkhorn in his pocket.
The stove was not the least ingenious piece of interior economy in the
hooker. It was judiciously isolated. Meanwhile the pot heaved--the
Provençal was watching it.
“Fish broth,” said he.
“For the fishes,” replied the doctor. Then he went on deck again.