CHAPTER XIII LA BELLE ARLéSIENNE

At about six o’clock the next morning Gaspard awoke from sleep, half stifled by the close air of the little cabin where Sagesse had placed him. The taste of the rum was still in his mouth, and at a stroke, and almost at the return of consciousness, the doings of the past night rose before him—up to a certain point. He remembered the conversation of Sagesse, he remembered taking the belt from his waist and flinging it and the pouch of money on the table, but beyond that point he remembered nothing.

He put his hand to his waist, belt and bag were gone. He put his legs out of the bunk, and was just in the act of getting on his feet when his hand rested on something hard, it was the pouch. It had not been tampered with, he could tell that by the feel, but, to make sure, he opened it and counted the gold pieces by the dim light which shone through the scuttle overhead.

Yes, the twenty-one pieces of gold were there, solid, bright and hard. He put the belt round his waist and buttoning his coat over the pouch came on deck.

La Belle Arlésienne, close hauled under all sail, was making a full eight knots steering S. S. E. with the coast of Haiti a line on the southern horizon. She had altered her course in the night and she lay now with the shoals and reefs south of Turks Island on her port quarter, but nothing of them shewed, for the sea over that way under72 the newborn sun lay like a blazing gem, a sheet of corrugated crystal, each of whose million, million facets was a mirror; then, round from there to where the bowsprit was poking at the sky above the sea line went the sea, without sail or sign of life deepening in blueness to where the far-off Haitian coast lay hyacinth coloured in the morning.

Gaspard looked around him, he could see no sign of Sagesse; a negro dressed in a pair of canvas trousers held by a single suspender, stood at the wheel, several more were grouped round the fo’csle-head engaged on some business, and a thin streak of smoke from the caboose told of breakfast in progress.

From where he stood the deck stretched away unencumbered by cargo, and barred by the shadows of the standing rigging; they had taken the boat on board, and she was lying bottom up on the deck forward of the mainmast.

Despite her age, despite the decks so yellow stained by time that plank and dowel were of the same colour and indistinguishable, despite the sails all cut and patched, the old barquentine had still a look of buoyancy and life caught from the brave morning light and the flooding azure of sea and sky.

The smell of tar and bilge and rope, the groan of rubber and creak of mast brought up for Gaspard the vision of the Tamalpais and his early youth. No other sensation is at all like the feel of a sailing ship beneath one’s feet. The steamer is a dead weight driven by an alien force, its progression is a continual insult to the wind and the sea, but the sailing ship is one with the sea and the wind, her motion is fluent, fresh, and part of the eternal movement of nature. As Gaspard stood with his eyes fixed on the distant Haitian coast, Sagesse came out of the deck-house and gave him good-morning.

73 The Captain had a telescope in his hand, and ranging himself beside Gaspard he began to examine the coast-line attentively through the glass.

Not a word did he say of the proceedings of the past night. He stood picking out the points and headlands of the coast, remarking on them now and then, and now and then throwing in some piece of reminiscence, as “Over there—you can just see that bluish spot, it goes in deep, the land there—that’s where a big English ship went on the rocks. The Severn in the storm of ’82. I helped in the salving. Ma foi, I have never seen such a big ship with her back so broken. She was opened out like a band-box. She was filled with millinery, too. New York fashions for Jamaica; the rocks were dressed in chiffon, it was like the wreck of the Bon Marché, and the negresses came down to help—you can fancy!” or “That point, you can just see it with the eye to eastward of the blue spot, over there they hanged the last of the pirates, Freemantle—”

“What does he know, what did I say last night. I remember flinging the money on the table, I remember saying something about Yves—but what? Did I say much, did I say little? And the money, he must have picked it up and put it in the pouch, and put the pouch and belt beside me as I lay in the bunk, hog that I was—mordieu—what did I say?” These thoughts were running through Gaspard’s mind as he stood watching his companion and listening to his remarks almost without comprehending them.

But Sagesse, whatever he knew, shewed nothing of his knowledge. He chatted familiarly and easily, and when breakfast was brought aft by Jules they sat down to it, and over the steaming coffee and fried bacon and bananas, the Captain continued his easygoing discourse, chatting on74 everything and nothing, but always with interest.

The blackguardly edge had gone off his conversation, it was only at night it appeared whetted by alcohol, for Sagesse was a methodical drinker, never glancing at the bottle till the absinthe hour.

Gaspard during the meal made an offer of work, but Sagesse would not hear of it.

“You are a brother Proven?al, well, I have picked you up floating about on the sea and that’s all about it, I have more than enough hands to work the ship, and your food, what does it cost? Besides, we can settle up at St. Pierre. St. Pierre, Martinique, yes that is my port. You have never been there? Ah, mordieu, then you have never seen life, you will see it at St. Pierre where men know how to laugh, and love is as cheap as bananas.”

“Well, I will be able to pay you,” said Gaspard, “that is to say if I ever can pay you for all you have done for me.”

Sagesse laughed.

His face, ordinarily pleasant except for a certain fixity of the eyes, lost its pleasantness in some strange way when he laughed.

Clean shaved, except for a rather heavy and drooping moustache, fat and weather-tanned, in white cap and apron, save for his bronzing he would have made an ideal chef; a concocter of sauces and entremets, fat with the steam of his kitchen; but when he laughed he shewed his teeth and just that one touch destroyed his bonhommie, for his laughter did not extend above his mouth, and laughter is inhuman when the eyes do not correct the teeth.

All day they kept the Haitian coast on the distant horizon, the water had been blue off the island, but to Gaspard, as he hung over the side, it seemed that this water was75 even bluer. It was; the Caribbean, that great lake of burning indigo, was sending its colour to meet them, the foam flakes from the fore-foot of the Belle Arlésienne swept past like marble shavings cast on slabs of lapis-lazuli, and violets would have seemed pale and faded held against the background of the sea to southward.