CHAPTER II A SECRET OF THE SEA

“Eh bien?”

The big Yves laughed in his beard and dug his naked toes into the hot white sand luxuriously. Gaspard was shod, for he had turned in all standing just before the disaster to the ship; but Yves, more particular or less tired, had kicked his shoes off.

“Eh bien?”

“Something funny, mordieu! Yes, when you see it you’ll stare.”

“Well, what is it? You keep on like an old woman; if you found anything funnier than yourself it would be queer.”

“Well, then, come and look and you will see.” Yves rose to his feet, kicked the crabs into a heap, spread the sail on the sand, and placing the crabs in the sail, made a bundle of them; having tied the bundle with a rope he placed it in the shadow of the palms.

“That will keep them safe till we come back,” said Yves, “allons.”

He led the way right across the islet to the north.

It was scarcely a quarter of a mile wide, this islet, and covered from shore edge to shore edge with thick bay-cedar bushes rising to the knees. The only trees upon it were the palms. Those seven palms gathered in the clump beneath whose shade the Moco had been lying.

9 The breeze, which had freshened momentarily, had now died again, and as they tramped through the dense growth the sun, now passing into the western sky, struck them on their left sides so that they could have sworn they were walking side turned to an open furnace door. But they were used to heat and neither of them grumbled, or only occasionally the Moco.

“Well, this is a nice tramp to see something funny; it seems to me the funny thing is that we should be sweating ourselves like this; if you could shew me a decent bar at the end of our journey—”

“Come on,” replied Yves; “you will not be sorry when you see it.”

The sea to the eastward of the island was heavily sown with reefs; the great reef that had destroyed the Rhone lay due south; northward there were also reefs; only to the west was the approach to the island safe.

“Here we are,” said Yves, as he tramped his way out of the bushes and on to the northern beach, the Moco following.

Yes, there were reefs here, indeed, just a dark bloom under the blue water, just a trace of snow; a pencilling of foam shewed where the murderers of the sea lay hidden, and the sea was beautiful here, more beautiful than to the south of the island, for the reefs and the shallows were continually changing in the wonderful light of the tropics to suit the hour of the day; colours chasing colours, sky blue parallels of sea and heather purple lines of reef greeting the dawn, cornflower-coloured spaces of water flashing the sky back like mirrors at noon, whilst at sunset, in those wonderful sunsets that reach to the zenith, all this stretch of sea and reef would be a field of beaten gold.

Just as the ever-changing light of day made ever-changing10 beauties, so did the ever-changing air, and ever-changing tide; at low tide with a strong breeze every reef would speak and you would hear a sound that once heard you would never forget, the song of a hundred tiny shores, the tune of the reefs. Sometimes in those great low tides in which we fancy the moon and the sun hauling together at the heavy blue robe of the sea, as if to make her shew her hidden armour and her scars, the reefs would be fully exposed, razor-edged, hungry, and lean. In these low tides you would see great fish betrayed by the sea and trapped in the pools, flinging themselves in the air like curved silver swords. Conversely, in the great high tides you might have sailed a battleship in fancy over the unclouded water.

Yves, leaving the beach, began to clamber along a ledge of rock that went straight out from the shore like a natural pier; Gaspard followed him, treading the seaweed under foot. There were no gulls here; the fishing ground of the gulls lay to the southeast, but so small was the island that you could still hear their voices on the air that had now become absolutely windless.

The water lay deep and clear on the left of the ledge of the rocks, but Gaspard had eyes for nothing but the slippery seaweed under foot.

These reefs are as a rule so rough, so serrated with keen-edged spines of coral, that bare-footed, as Yves was, to walk on them would be impossible; but this great ledge was comparatively smooth; it lay above high tide for the first hundred yards or so, and then, shelving slightly, lost itself at high tide beneath the water.

The tide since its turn had already fallen two feet and the hidden part of the reef was beginning to shew. It was plain to the eye that the whole reef formed the edge of an11 immense bath-like basin, an elliptiform lagoon, the longest diameter of which lay from north to south.

Yves led the way till they were fifty yards from the shore; then he stopped, turned, and pointed into the green clear water to the left.

The lagoon, unruffled by a breath of wind, lay lit to its heart and burning like a vast and flawless emerald, its floor of salt white sand, though invisible to the eye, was still reached by the sun rays and flung them back in a million sparkles that combined to form the water’s dazzling soul.

Twenty feet out from the reef lay what seemed at first a flat-topped, reed-grown rock; the tide was slowly uncovering it and the ribbons of seaweed growing from it waved in the aquamarine of the water as grass or land foliage waves in a gentle wind. The rock, weed-grown and emerging from the water, had for a base a column thicker than a man’s body, a column here dazzling bright and flower coloured, here dim and darkened with growing fucus; a column whose lowermost part was lost in the vagueness of the lagoon. The Moco, who had flung himself down and was leaning over the reef ledge so as to see better, gave a start. His sailor’s eye, after the first surprise, saw through the mystery of the rock growing like a hideous flower on a coloured stalk. The rock was the foretop of a ship, the column was the coral-crusted mast.

But the mystery dispelled was as nothing to the mystery half-unveiled. To the Moco, who combined in himself the imagination of the southern man and the imagination of the sailor, this hint of a ship in the still and silent water appealed more forcibly than the full sight of a wreck on a thunderous beach.

12 The coral-crusted mast led the eye down till the sight found the pale, fish-like form of the ship itself.

“Boufre,” cried the Moco; “’tis as thick as a funnel.” Then he was silent as was Yves, and lying side by side on the grey dead coral of the reef, they contemplated the column of living coral that once had formed the mast of a ship.

The ship lay below unharmed as to her fore part, else the mast would not have been left standing; driven years ago by some great wave, she must have passed at one stride of the sea over the circling reef of the lagoon, to sink, the water pouring through her shattered timbers, and lie lost here forever.

Or, in those past days there may have been a break in the reef built up long ago by the restless coral. How she had found her last resting place who could say; what had been her business who could tell, but trumpets could not have proclaimed doom and death more poignantly than did the awful silence, the vagueness into which the mast sank and wavered, towards the ghostly ship.

For eight feet or so below the foretop the mast was dressed with seaweed, shewing only here and there the white of the coral crust; below that the seaweed did not grow. The eight feet indicated the rise and fall of the tide, for the lagoon, though shewing no break in its encircling reef, communicated through twenty unseen openings with the outer sea and filled and emptied to high and low water like a great cullender.

Flights of painted fishes flashed now and then through the water and vanished, the seaweeds growing from the mast shewed waving as if to a submarine wind, now like dark brown ribbons of shadow, now like a drowned woman’s hair powdered with sparkling blossoms; now a tress of vivid13 green would be loosened by the fingers of the outgoing tide, catch a sunbeam and shew its beauty, or a tress of amber.

As they watched and as the tide sank lower, inch by inch and foot by foot, the hidden portion of the mast jewelled with coral and sea growths stole more clearly into view, and foot by foot the seaweed portion beneath the foretop stole from the water and stood dripping, dank, and dismal in the sun, clearer and clearer like a grey cloud, fish-shaped and enormous in the green below the lost ship began to unveil herself to the sight. It was like the coming of a ghost, a thing most dim yet wonderful to be seen.

One could trace the mast, now, right down to the deck. It sprang from a coloured column from which here and there grew great sea fans that seemed made from dark lace and strewn here and there with all colours from the brilliant red of tiny starfish to the delicate peach-bloom of the flat lichen coral. So rich, so delicate, so opulent in colour, it might have been the column of some fairy palace, this old foremast of a forgotten ship.

The two men, taking comfortable positions on the reef, had lit their pipes. Hour after hour they sat smoking, interchanging a few words, but always with their eyes alive for changes in the water below. Now forgetting to smoke, they lay on their elbows looking down into the green depth where, stronger through the shallowing water, sharper, clearer, the ship began to shew her form hideous to the sight as the form of a man bloated by disease; grey, enormous, muffled with coral, tufted with what seemed fungous growths.

“Look,” said Yves, pointing down to where the fantastically high poop was humping itself into view, “saw you ever a ship built in that fashion floating on the sea? Why she is from the time of Noah—In the church at Paimpol14 they have a model ship like that; she was dedicated to the Virgin in the old days—”

“Let us look,” growled the Moco, speaking as if irritated by the voice of his companion; then he hung silent, his eyes fixed on the vision developing below. The tide had sunk now to within a foot of low water mark, and as the veil of water lessened so did the vision strengthen; one could make out the decks clearly, all rough with coral, and the coral banks that were once the bulwarks, a stump of mainmast was left and had become converted into a cone of coral the height of a man; trace of mizzen mast there was none.