CHAPTER XL THE PASSING OF SAGESSE

He must have fallen asleep as he knelt, for when he regained consciousness he had no memory of having lain down. Yet he was lying on his side amidst the bushes, the day was broad, the sun shining, the sky without a cloud, though still swept by the rushing wind.

He remembered all that had passed clearly and distinctly and the miracle of that blue sky above him, after the black and howling chaos of the night, filled his heart with thankfulness untold.

He rose to his feet. His clothes were stiff with sea-salt, his eyes half-blinded by the light. Then he cried out in astonishment. The island, under the sun, and surrounded by the racing amethyst of the sea, lay glittering white as frost. It was sea-salt from the spray of the night before. The palm trees were no longer there. There was nothing to be seen but the winter-white bushes beneath the burning sun. Bodies were washing ashore on the beach close to him, but he scarcely glanced at them, the desolation before him held him motionless and the knowledge that everything was blown away, provisions, tent, everything!

He crossed to the southern beach. There lay the palms, snapped off and dashed into the sand; a little mound just by the sea edge drew him towards it; it was the case of provisions. Hurled along by the wind, it had struck a lump of coral and been sanded over; it had been shaken258 almost to pieces and a few blows with his heel burst the staves apart. It was packed with tins of American preserved meat, such as are exported especially to the West Indies. He haggled a tin open with his knife and set to on its contents. As he ate he saw something tangled in the fronds of one of the broken palms. He came to it, kicked the sand aside and found the bag of biscuit. Things were not, then, so bad; but his mind was so dazed and benumbed that he scarcely felt satisfaction at the sight of the food and the knowledge that for a time, at least, he was saved from starvation. He stood chewing the meat and gazing about him, as an animal might gaze on finding itself in a strange place.

Ever since his first landing upon it with Yves, the island had seemed possessed of some diabolical presence. Yet on looking back, there was nothing to be perceived but just an ordinary and logical chain of events. With the exception of finding the gold and the coral ship in the lagoon, all the events, even the killing of Yves, came within the province of ordinary sequence. Yet how sinister were they, taken as a whole, from the first glimpse of the ship in the water to the last glimpse of La Belle Arlésienne hurled to her death by the waves.

He was thinking nothing of this as he stood chewing the food and gazing about him. The satisfaction of his hunger was all that troubled him for the moment; then he sought the little spring amidst the bushes, and drank.

He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours, and now the food he had taken made him feel drowsy, heavy with weariness. He came to the blown-down palms, made what shelter he could from the sun with their fronds, lay down beside them and fell asleep.

When he awoke some hours later, his mind was clear259 and his first thought was of Sagesse. So strange a thing is the human mind that here, cast away, marooned on this desolate spot without a tent to shelter him or a soul to share his loneliness, his first sensation on fully regaining his faculties was one of triumph. Sagesse had gone under, that hateful mind, perfidious and dark, would trouble him no more. He was revenged. He rose to his feet and shook the sand from his clothes. The wind was still blowing strong, but the sea had fallen. The gulls had not returned, and the only sounds in all that blue and breezy world were the sounds of the wind and the breaking waves. The frost-white glitter of the bay-cedar bushes lent an extra touch of brilliancy to the scene. Never had he seen the island like this, sea-dashed and wind-blown, surrounded with tumultuous life.

He crossed over to the northern beach. He wished to see what he could of the wreck, but even before he was half way across he could see that nothing remained of La Belle Arlésienne but a few spars washing about in the lagoon water, where ship of wood and ship of coral lay locked together in ruin.

But things were washing ashore on the full tide—black things to make one shudder, forms with limbs outspread, looking like enormous jet-black starfish, forms locked together in a deadly embrace as though they had gone to their death fighting.

Then as Gaspard stepped from the bushes he saw with a thrill of horror that the sands were in motion. Thousands upon thousands of little crabs were congregating to the feast; he trod on them as he walked, and amidst them, like moving rocks, giant crabs from the eastern beach were advancing like captains of this army of destruction.

He would have fled the hateful place had he not noticed260 a form that the sea had cast up almost free of the waves.

It was the body of Sagesse.

The man of wisdom and resource lay on his side, huddled up as if asleep. He was fully dressed. Horrible though the place was and dreadful with death, not all the horror in the world could have prevented Gaspard from advancing towards the body of Sagesse. It drew him towards it against his will, as if by some mesmeric influence.

The right hand of the Captain lying across his chest had upon one of the fingers something that glittered in the sun like a star. It was a diamond, enormous and lovely with light, set in an old-fashioned ring. It would have graced the crown of an emperor; it would have held Gaspard fascinated had not another object held him breathless. From the muffler around the neck of Sagesse protruded the head of a snake. Two bright red burning eyes flashed in the sun, the thing seemed furious at being disturbed; a moment more and one would have expected it to wriggle from its concealment and strike, but Gaspard feared it less even than he had feared the fer de lance of the Place du Fort. He knelt down beside Sagesse, heedless of the crabs now surrounding him, removed the muffler from his neck and then removed the snake. It was of solid gold, flexible, one of those antique bracelets made to wind round and cling to a woman’s arm. The flat portion of the head was formed by a quadrille of flat sapphires, the eyes were pigeon-blood rubies. Leaving the extraordinary beauty of the workmanship aside, the stones alone were worth a little fortune.

Then Gaspard knew that the captain had indeed found the treasure of Simon Serpente, and, seeing shipwreck before him, had sorted out the most valuable things in a wild attempt to save them with his own wretched life. With the261 sweat breaking out on his forehead at the possibilities before him, he flung the serpent of gold on the ground before searching the body. It fell on the swarming crabs. He picked it up and flung it round his own neck. Then he noticed that his hand was bleeding; it had been nipped by one of the vermin which were now crawling up on the body of Sagesse, as the Lilliputians swarmed on Gulliver. Seized with fury, he sprang to his feet and kicked the brutes hither and thither, stamped on them, crushed them. He might as well have stamped on water advancing from an overflowing dam; the clicking and rustling hordes swarmed on.

He flung himself on his knees again beside the body, seized the hand with the ring, drew the jewel off and put it in his pocket. He scarcely noticed that a crab was clinging to the hand as he flung it aside. The left coat pocket of Sagesse was bulging. He thrust his hand in and drew out a knotted handkerchief; it chinked like a bag of marbles, and from a corner a piece of broken gold fell out. It was part of a brooch. He did not stay to investigate further; the handkerchief held treasure. He thrust it into his pocket and went on. There was a pocket-book in the breast pocket of the coat, in the other pockets nothing of value. He opened the waistcoat; he tore open the shirt; nothing more. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he was about to rise to his feet when he remembered that he had not examined the left hand for rings.

He pushed the body over.

The left hand of Sagesse was closed tight on something. The rigor mortis was just passing, and Gaspard had no difficulty in unlocking the fingers from the treasure they contained. It was a pearl, a lovely milk-white pearl, large almost as a pigeon’s egg. Why he had clung to this thing especially, whether from superstition or not, who can say?

262 Or was it a pearl not belonging to Serpente’s treasure at all? A pearl of the lagoon that by some extraordinary chance the drowning man had seized upon unknowingly in his struggles? One might almost have imagined this to be the case, for this thing was virginal as the sea and had evidently never been set or worn by mortal.

Who can say? But so the captain of La Belle Arlésienne had gone to his Maker, clasping this emblem of purity in his hand, almost a parable on the mighty truth that each one of us, however evil, has yet, in his soul, somewhere, a priceless pearl.

Thoughts that never occurred to Gaspard.

He had risen to his feet. In his pockets lay the plunder he had taken from Sagesse, in his hand the pearl, around his feet the crabs swarming to their prey.

He was rich.

The sea had given him the riches that other men toil their lives for, given it to him in one great glittering handful. He seemed standing before a blinding light. It seemed unthinkable that he who had striven all his life for a pittance, working now as a sailor before the mast, now as a slave in the blind alley of the stokehold, it seemed unthinkable that he should have drawn this tremendous and glittering prize.

As he stood in the blazing sunshine, the wind blowing his hair about his eyes, his eyes staring, astonished, fixed, as though he were gazing at Fortune herself, a black shadow passed over him. It was the shadow of a cormorant.

Away out across the waves other birds were coming to the feast; the wreck and the stranded corpses had been signalled for miles across the sea, for the sea, like the desert, has a watch-tower—the air, and a watchman who never leaves that tower—eternal Hunger.

263 The bird cried as it wheeled and the cry brought Gaspard to his senses. He glanced up, then down at the swarming beach; then, touching his pocket to make sure that the contents were safe, he turned from the horrors around him and made towards the southern beach, running.

He wished to be alone with his treasure. He shouted like a boy as he ran, taking the road through the bushes that Serpente’s sailors had cut for the boat. The jewelled snake round his throat glittered and flashed; never was there a more extraordinary picture than this man, half ragged, his clothes stained with sea-salt, his hair blowing on the wind, the jewelled serpent around his neck, running and shouting as he ran to the desolation around him, and with Fortune.

At the place where the palm trees lay prone on the sand he stopped, sat down, took the serpent of gold from around his throat and placed it on the sand beside him, and beside it the parcel.

Then from his pocket he took the knotted handkerchief and the ring. He placed the ring by the pearl and then he unknotted the handkerchief and poured the contents on the white sand between his legs.