The sea lay blue to the far horizon. Blue—Ah, blue is but a name till you have seen the sea that breaks around the Bahamas and gives anchorage to the tall ships at Port Royal; that great sheet of blue water stretching from Cape Catoche to the Windward Islands, and from Yucatan to beyond the Bahamas, studded with banks and keys and reefs, the old sea of the Buccaneers shot over with the doings of Kidd and Singleton and Horne.
On the salt white sand in the blinding dazzle of sunlight the waves were falling, clear-green, crystalline, each lovely as a jewel. The crying of the gulls, loud all the morning, had died down with high afternoon and high tide; the wind had faded as though withered by the sun. Just at the moment of high tide the sea makes a pause in its eternal labour, the great act of systole has been accomplished and, break the waves as they may, the profound languor of the ocean makes itself heard and felt.
Gaspard Cadillac, ex-stoker of the Rhone, sitting with his back against a palm tree cleaning an old tobacco pipe and absorbed in the job, felt this pause and hold-up in2 nature just as the gulls felt it—just as much and just as little as they.
“I have raised my horizon,” said the sea. “I have lifted fleets towards heaven, hidden reefs; I have drained the occidental shores and domed with water the Indies, I rest from my labours and I dream.”
Our man beneath the tree was a Moco. The French navy is divided into two great classes, the men from the south and the men from the north, the Moco and the Ponantaise.
Gaspard was a man from the south, a Proven?al, dark, handsome in a rough way, wiry and vivid. Yves, his bosom companion, also a stoker of the Rhone and the only survivor with Gaspard of the wreck of that ill-fated ship, was a Ponantaise, a big man from Bretagne with a blond beard. Yves was over away on the other side of the little island now hunting for what he might find in the rock pools and creeks. Away out there in a right line from where Gaspard was sitting beneath the palm trees, under the blinding dazzle of sea, the Rhone was lying with her bottom ripped out, her boilers burst, her boats hanging smashed at her davits; a horrible travesty of a ship, knocked under the sea as if with the blow of a giant’s fist, a raffle of ropes, machinery, and corpses.
The gods had been very good to Gaspard and Yves, and Gaspard had, by the direction of the gods, been the salvation of Yves. The whole catastrophe had come like a clap of thunder on a moonlit sea. The “Haa-r rip” of the reef that had been waiting a million years for the Rhone, the screaming of scalding steam and scalded men, a wild bellow from the siren, the roar of the boilers opening out, and the shout of the lifting decks, all that, so thunderous and apocalyptic, so full of tragedy, and torment, and woe,3 filled the night for a moment for miles around, and then there was nothing but the moonlit sea.
Yves was a good swimmer, but his heart had gone out in him; he had been held down under water by the suck of the sinking ship, and he would have drowned to a certainty only for Gaspard, who was a bad swimmer but a bad drowner.
The wiry Proven?al, courageous as a rat, had held Yves’ head above water till Yves felt the sea slapping him in the face and saw a great spar lifting and dripping in the moonlight; saw Gaspard seize the spar, a picture almost instantaneous, a picture that told him at once the truth and made him strike out for safety.
The set of the current had carried the spar to the islet. One might have fancied that the sea, repenting for that sin of hers, had determined to save these two last survivors of the Rhone. But the sea cared for the men as much as she cared for the spar—less, for they were lighter.
Boxes and crates had come drifting ashore, getting caught and tangled in the reef-mesh to eastward of the islet; a horrible abundance of provisions, all sorts of articles from the cargo, corpses, spars, everything yet nothing, pounding about in the desolate reef-strewn water, made the east side of the islet a place to avoid.
The two men in the few days since the wreck had salved enough food to last them for months, there was a spring of water amidst the low bay-cedar bushes that stretched from shore edge to shore edge, the islet was in a trade track, and they were certain of near rescue; all these circumstances made them easy of mind and made a holiday of the episode.
Gaspard having cleaned the pipe to his satisfaction, filled it with tobacco and lit it. Then he lay on his back4 with his head in the scanty shade of the palm fronds, the peak of his cap over his eyes, the smoke from his pipe curling upwards in the windless air.
Windless for a moment only. The tide had turned and with the turn of the tide a faint breathing shook the palm tops against the blue. Maybe it was the breeze carrying the voices nearer, but the crying of the gulls seemed to louden with the turning tide.
Jean Fran?ois de Nantes,
Jean Fran?ois, Jean Fran?ois,
Jean Fran?ois de Nantes,
Jean Fran?ois, Jean Fran?ois.
The old interminable song of the French navy immortalized by Loti sang in the ears of the Moco as he lay, blissful, forgetful, seeing pictures, dreaming dreams.
Now he was in the stokehold of the Rhone feeding furnace No. 2. He could feel the cotton waste protecting his hands from the heat of the rake; he could hear the clatter of the ash lift and the boom of the sea.
Hi! Hi! Hi! The weary, querulous call of the gulls brought up the Tamalpais, a three-master in which he had served for a voyage.
Hi! Hi! Hi! It was the very voices of the men hauling on the halyards; he could see the topsails bellying to the wind, the great sails held hard against the blue, the yards, the studding sail booms; away from years ago and across three thousand miles of sea came the voices of the men hauling in chorus, echoes from the past answering the lamentable crying of the gulls.
And now the Tamalpais went to pieces, became a curl of smoke, vanished, and he was on the wharves of Marseilles,5 in a bar standing before a zinc counter, a chopin of wine, and a girl.
Ah! that was it, the girl; some piece of grit had been irritating his mind for the last few minutes, something behind his laziness and happiness had been working for his discomfort; we all know that feeling when the subconscious self is grumbling or worrying over something that the conscious self has forgotten for a moment.
Anisette was the name she went by; a pale-faced, undersized girl. You would not, possibly, have looked at her twice, but had you done so you would, were you a man, certainly have looked at her a third time.
She was of the type that appeals to a man’s passions, never to his heart, and she stood at the bar of the Riga where the Swedes and Norwegians congregate, and there Yves and Gaspard had fallen in with her and she had favoured Yves.
The big, blond Yves had captured this little pirate who had sailed for years unharmed and harmful. She had scorned Gaspard, who would have given his hand for a glance from her, and she had given herself wholly to Yves.
Had he loved the woman with a pure and simple love Gaspard might have forgiven Yves, his bosom companion, for the victory; his affection for Yves was one of those brotherly loves that ennoble a man, and the Moco was capable, perhaps, of a splendid abnegation. But Yves had crossed him in his passions and the Moco was a man who could never forgive that.
Hi! Hi! Hi!
Girl and bar and Riga tavern vanished, giving place to Marseilles harbour, with the Rhone thrashing her way out. A passenger had given Yves a cigar; it was always the6 way; Yves had all the luck; if there was a cigar or a drink going it always fell to Yves—or a girl—yet he, Gaspard, had saved this man’s life.
Now, on board ship, at work, all these grumblings would have been there in the heart of Gaspard, but they would have been undeveloped; here, in idleness, they grew; and to visualize the awful power of woman it is enough to make your mental standpoint the apex of a vast triangle the other two angles of which are Anisette serving drinks in the tobacco-smelling bar of the Riga and the Moco beneath the palm trees warring in thought against his bosom friend Yves.
A great crab fell with a thud on the sand beside Gaspard, who sprang half erect to find himself face to face with Yves.
The Ponantaise was laughing. He had caught the crab amidst the rocks; he had two more under his arm, their claws tied together with a string; he had found a boat sail from the Rhone and a small spar, out of which he intended to make a tent; he flung the lot on the sand and then sat down beside his companion, took out his pipe, filled it, lit it, and began to smoke.
The Moco, after his exclamation of surprise, had fallen back in his old position, and the two men smoked without interchanging a word.
They would go like this for a long time without speaking a word. One might have fancied them enemies, or at least put out at one another; not at all. They were simply sharing the tremendous taciturnity of their species. All who help in the labor of the sea share in its weariness, Vasta Silentio, the motto, is written on the waves.
Hi! Hi! Hi!
The breeze had freshened a bit, giving life and energy7 to the calling of the gulls; the Moco, his pipe out, pushed his cap back from his eyes and sat up.
“See here,” said Yves, “you know over there where I fetched these things from—well—over there I’ve found something.”