Books > History > Americas > Caribbean & West Indies > Saint Kitts

By Alex Raponi

Copyright © 201 9 Alex Raponi

All rights reserved.

ISBN:
 
 
 

DEDICATION
 
 
To those in doubt .
 

 
 
 

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CONTENTS

I. JEAN FRANCOIS OF NANTES 1

II. A SECRET FROM THE SEA 8
III. EVENING 15
IV. SPANISH GOLD 19
V. AMONG THE BUSHES 27
WE. ALONE 30
VII. THE BOAT 42
VIII. ESCAPE 49
IX. A STAR ON THE SEA 53
X. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 56
XI. CAPTAIN WISDOM 61
XII. RUM 65
XIII. LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE 71
XIV. THE CHANGER MONEY 76
XV. THE MAGICAL CITY 83
XVI. VICTOR HUGO STREET 89
XVII. THE BELLS AND THE RAIN 102
XVIII. LOVE 106
XIX. MARIE OF MORNE ROUGE 122

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XX. FATE 130

XXI. THE FLEUR D'AMOUR 134
XXII. THE ROAD TO GRANDE ANSE 139
XXIII. THEY MEET 144
XXIV. FLOWER OF LIGHT 157 u
s
XXV. SIMON SERPENTE 160
XXVI. SKELETON ISLAND 182
XXVII. THE GARDEN OF LOVE 186
XXVIII. THE FATEFUL LIGHT 192
XXIX. THE SAILING OF LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE 198
XXX. PEDRO 202
XXXI. IN FORT DE FRANCE, AY, HO! 208
XXXII. THE FO'CS'LE 211
XXXIII. THE REVOLVER 215
XXXIV. THE VISION OF THE TREASURE 221
XXXV. LANDING 230
XXXVI. THE SKULLS 236
XXXVII. WISDOM IS CORNERED 240
XXXVIII. AWAKENING 243
XXXIX. DISASTER 249
XL. THE DEATH OF WISDOM 257
XLI. TREASURE 264
XLII. THE SEA OF MORNING 275
XLIII. ISSUANCE 283
XLIV. SIMON STOCK 287

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XLV. MOUNT PELEE 293

XLVI. ASHES 299
XLVII. STEP IN THE DUST 302
     

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CHAPTER I
VALENTIN DE NANT ES VALENTIN — VALENTIN

The sea was blue on the distant horizon. Blue - Ah, blue is just a name
until you've seen the sea breaking around the Bahamas and anchoring the
tall ships of Port Royal; this great sheet of blue water that stretches from
Cape Catoche to the Windward Islands, and from Yucatan to beyond the
Bahamas, dotted with banks, keys and reefs, the old Buccaneer of the Sea
had spanned the activities of Kidd, Singleton and Horne.  
On the salty white sand in the blinding glare of the sunlight, the
waves were falling, light green, crystalline, each lovely as a jewel. The
tears of the gulls, noisy all morning, had subsided with the high afternoon
and high tide; the wind had faded as if dried up by the sun. Just at the
moment of high tide, the sea pauses in its eternal toil, the great act of
systole is accomplished and, breaking the waves as they can, the deep
languor of the ocean is heard and felt.   
Hubert Voulton, former captain of the Garonne, sitting back against a
palm cleaning old pipe tobacco and absorbed by work, felt this break and
robbery in nature as gulls the felt - as much and as little that 'them.   
“I have raised my horizon,” says the sea. “I have raised fleets to the
sky, hidden reefs; I drained the western coasts and bombarded the Indies
with water, I rest from my work and I dream.  
Our man under the tree was a Moco. The French navy is divided into
two main classes, the men of the south and the men of the north, the
Moco and the Ponantaise. 
Hubert was a southerner, a Provencal, sombre, handsome in a rough,
stiff and lively manner. Jaques, his breast mate, also captain of
the Rhône  and the only survivor with Hubert of the wreck of this
unfortunate ship, was a Ponantaise, a tall Breton with a blond
beard. Jaques was on the other side of the small island looking for what he
could find in the rock pools and streams. Far over there in a straight line
from where Hubert was seated under the palm trees, under the blinding
glare of the sea, the Garonne  lay with its bottom torn off, its boilers burst,
its boats suspended broken from its davits; a horrible parody of a ship
struck under the sea like a giant punch, a raffle of ropes, machines and
corpses.        

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The gods had been very kind to Hubert and Jaques, and Hubert had
been, under the guidance of the gods, the salvation of Jaques. The whole
catastrophe had come like a thunderclap on a moonlit sea. The reef which
had waited for the Garonne  for a million years, the howl of hot steam and
scalded men, a savage howl of the siren, the roar of boilers opening and
the cry of lifting bridges, all this, so thunderous and apocalyptic, so full of
tragedy, torment and misfortune, filled the night for a while for miles
around, then there was only the sea lit by the moon.        
Jaques was a good swimmer, but his heart was gone within him; he
had been held underwater by the suction of the sinking ship, and he
would have drowned if not for Hubert, who was a bad swimmer but a bad
drowned man. 
The stiff Provençal, brave as a rat, had held Jaques' head above the
water until Jaques felt the sea slap him and saw a large spar rise and drip
in the moonlight; saw Hubert seize the spar, an almost instantaneous
image, an image which immediately told him the truth and made him take
safety. 
The whole current had carried the spar to the islet. One could have
imagined that the sea, repenting of its sin, had decided to save these last
two survivors of the Rhône. But the sea cared as much for the men as it
did for the spar - less, for they were lighter.    
Boxes and crates had drifted in, getting caught and tangled in the
mesh of the reef to the east of the islet; a horrible abundance of
provisions, all kinds of cargo, corpses, spars, all that more nothing,
pounding in the desolate reef-strewn waters, made the east side of the
islet a place to be avoided. 
Both men in the few days since the wreck had saved enough food to
last for months, there was a spring of water amid the low bay cedar
bushes that stretched from the edge of the shore to the edge from shore,
the islet was in a trade route, and they were certain of a near rescue; all
these circumstances reassured them and made the episode a celebration. 
Hubert having cleaned the pipe to his satisfaction, filled it with
tobacco and lit it. Then he lay on his back with his head in the thin shade
of palm leaves, the tip of his cap over his eyes, the smoke from his pipe
curling upward in the windless air.  

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Windless for a moment only. The tide had turned and with the
reversal of the tide, a slight breath shook the palm trees against the
blue. Perhaps it was the breeze that carried the voices closer, but the cries
of the seagulls seemed to deepen as the tide turned.  

Valentin of Nantes,
Valentin, Valentin,
Valentin of Nantes,
Valentin, Valentin.

The endless old song of the French navy immortalized by Loti sang in
the ears of the Moco lying, happy, forgetful, seeing images, dreaming of
dreams.
It was now in the cooking zone of the Rhône  feed furnace n ° 2. He
could feel the cotton waste protecting his hands from the heat of the
rake; he could hear the clatter of the ash heaving and the boom of the
sea.     
Hi! Hi! Hi! The weary and quarrelsome call of the seagulls brought up
the Tamalpais, a three-mast in which it had served for a voyage.     
Hi! Hi! Hi! It was the very voice of the men pulling on the halyards; he
saw the Hunis blowing in the wind, the great sails hardened against the
blue, the yards, the studded booms of the sails; far from years ago and
across three thousand miles of sea, the voices of men pulling in the chorus
were heard, echoes of the past responding to the mournful cries of
seagulls.     
And now the Tamalpais  was decomposing, becoming a loop of
smoke, disappearing, and he was on the quays of Marseille, in a bar
standing in front of a zinc counter, a mug of wine and a girl.     
Ah! that was it, the girl; a piece of sand had been irritating his mind
for a few minutes, something behind his laziness and his happiness had
worked for his discomfort; we all know this feeling when the subconscious
self growls or worries about something that the conscious self has
forgotten for a while.   
Anisette was his name; a girl with a pale face and too small. You
might not have watched her twice, but if you had, if you were a man, you
certainly would have watched her a third time.  

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She was the type to appeal to a man's passions, never to her heart,
and she stood at the helm of the Riga where the Swedes and Norwegians
meet, and there Jaques and Hubert had fallen with her and she had
favoured Jaques.
The tall blond Jaques had captured this little pirate who had sailed for
years unscathed and harmful. She had despised Hubert, who would have
given her his hand for a look from her, and she had given herself up
entirely to Jaques. 
If he had loved the woman with pure and simple love, Hubert could
have forgiven Jaques, his breast mate, the victory; his affection for Jaques
was one of those fraternal loves which ennoble a man, and the Moco was
perhaps capable of magnificent self-sacrifice. But Jaques had met him in
his passions and the Moco was a man who could never forgive him.  
Hi! Hi! Hi!  
The girl and the bar and the tavern Riga disappeared, giving way to
the port of Marseille, the Garonne is  clearing a path. A passenger had
given Jaques a cigar; it was always the way; Jaques had all the luck; if
there was a cigar or a glass, it always came back to Jaques - or a girl - yet
he, Hubert, had saved this man's life.       
Now, onboard the ship, at work, all these grunts would have been
there in Hubert's heart, but they would have been little developed; here,
in idleness, they have grown; and to visualize the terrible power of the
woman, it is enough to make from your mental point of view the top of a
vast triangle whose two other angles are Anisette serving drinks in the bar
with the smell of tobacco of Riga and the Moco under palm trees at
war. thought against his dear friend Jaques.  
A large crab fell with a thud on the sand next to Hubert, who jumped
halfway up to find himself face to face with Jaques.
The Ponantaise laughed. He had caught the crab in the middle of the
rocks; he had two more under his arm, their claws tied with a string; he
had found a boat sailing on the Garonne  and a small spar which he
intended to make a tent; he cast the spell on the sand then sat down next
to his companion, took out his pipe, filled it, lit it and began to smoke.      
The Moco, after his exclamation of surprise, had fallen back into his
old position, and the two men were smoking without exchanging a word.

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They would go like this for a long time without saying a word. We
could have imagined them enemies, or at least attacking each other; not
at all. They simply shared the enormous taciturnity of their species. All
those who help in the work of the sea share its weariness, Vasta Silentio,
the motto, is written on the waves.
Hi! Hi! Hi!  
The breeze was a little refreshed, giving life and energy to the call of
the gulls; the Moco, his pipe out, pushed his cap back from his eyes and
sat down.  
"Look here," said Jaques, "you know over there where I got these
things from… well… over there I found something."

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CHAPTER II
A SECRET OF THE SEA
"Well?"
Tall Jaques laughed under his breath and luxuriously dug his bare toes
into the warm white sand. Hubert was shod, for he had put everything
back on its feet just before the disaster struck the ship; but Jaques, more
particular or less tired, had taken off his shoes.  
“ Well?  ”
"Something funny, mordieu  !"  Yes, when you see it, you will stare at
it.  
"Well, what is it? You carry on like an old woman; if you found
something funnier than yourself, that would be weird.  
"Well then, come on and look and you'll see." Jaques got up, put the
crabs in a heap, spread the sail on the sand, and placed the crabs in the
sail, made a bundle of them; having tied the bundle with a rope, he placed
it in the shade of the palms.  
“This will keep them safe until we get back,” Jaques said, “ let's go.  
He paved the way across the islet to the north.
It was barely a quarter of a mile wide, this islet, and covered from the
edge to the shore with thick cedar laurel bushes reaching up to their
knees. The only trees above were the palm trees. These seven palms
gathered in the massif under whose shadow the Moco had stretched out.  
The breeze, which had cooled momentarily, was now dead again, and
as they walked through the dense growth, the sun, now passing in the
western sky, struck them on their left side so that they would have could
swear they were walking on the side facing an open oven door. But they
were used to heat and neither of them growled, or only the Moco
occasionally. 
“Well, it's a good bum to see something funny; it seems to me that
the funny thing is that we should sweat like this; if you could show me a
decent bar at the end of our trip…  
"Come on," replied Jaques; "You won't be sorry when you see it." 

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The sea to the east of the island was heavily seeded with reefs; the
great reef which had destroyed the Garonne  was due south; to the north,
there were also reefs; only to the west was the safe island approach.     
"Here we are," said Jaques, as he emerged from the bushes and
headed for the north beach, the Moco following him.
Yes, there were reefs here, indeed, just a dark flower under the blue
water, just a hint of snow; a foam pencil showed where the murderers of
the sea were hiding, and the sea was beautiful here, more beautiful than
in the south of the island, as the reefs and shallows continually changed in
the wonderful light of the tropics for agreeing to the time of day; the
colours chasing the colours, the sky-blue parallels of the sea and the lines
of heather-purple reefs saluting the dawn, the cornflower-coloured water
spaces that reflect the sky like mirrors at noon, while at sunset, in those
wonderful sunsets that reach the zenith, all this an expanse of sea and
reef would be a field of beaten gold.  
Just like the ever-changing daylight beauties, the ever-changing air
and the ever-changing tide; at low tide, with a strong breeze every reef
spoke and you heard a sound that when heard you would never forget,
the song of a hundred small shores, the melody of the reefs. Sometimes in
those great low tides where you want the moon and the sun to drag the
heavy blue dress of the sea together, as if to show it its hidden armour
and scars, the reefs would be fully exposed, razor-sharp, hungry and
skinny. In those low tides, you would see large fish betrayed by the sea
and trapped in pools, throwing themselves into the air like curved silver
swords. Conversely, in spring high tides, you might have sailed a fancy
battleship over open water.     
Jaques, leaving the beach, began to climb along a rock ledge which
came straight out from the shore like a natural jetty; Hubert followed him,
trampling the algae under his feet. There were no seagulls here; the gull
fishing area was to the southeast, but the island was so small that their
voices could still be heard in the air which had now become windless.   
The water was deep and clear to the left of the ledge of the rocks, but
Hubert only had eyes for the slippery seaweed under his feet.
These reefs are generally so rough, so jagged with sharp coral spines,
that it would be impossible, barefoot, as Jaques was, to walk on them; but
this large ledge was relatively smooth; it lay above the high tide for the

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first hundred meters or so, then, spreading out slightly, was lost at high
tide underwater.  
The tide from his turn had already fallen two feet and the hidden part
of the reef was beginning to show. It was clear to the eye that the entire
reef formed the edge of a huge bath-shaped basin, an elliptical lagoon, the
longest diameter of which extended north to south.  
Jaques led the way until they were fifty yards from the shore; then he
stopped, turned and pointed to the clear green water to the left. 
The lagoon, imperturbable by a breath of wind, was lit in its heart and
burning like a vast and impeccable emerald, its salty white sand floor,
although invisible to the eye, was still reached by the rays of the sun and
the reflected in a million sparks which combined to form the dazzling soul
of water.
Twenty feet from the reef was what appeared at first to be a flat-
topped, reed-cultivated rock; the tide was slowly revealing it, and the
ribbons of algae which grew from it rippled in the aquamarine of the
water like grass or earthly foliage rippled in a gentle wind. The rock,
planted with weeds and emerging from the water, had for its base a
column thicker than a human body, a column here dazzling in bright and
flowery colour, here dark and darkened with growing wrack; a column
whose lower part was lost in the blur of the lagoon. The Moco, who had
thrown to the ground and was leaning over the edge of the reef to get a
better view, jumped. His sailor's eye, after the first surprise, saw through
the mystery of the rock that grew like a hideous flower on a colourful
stalk. The rock was the eaves of a ship, the column was the coral-crusted
mast.      
But the mystery dispelled was nothing of the half-revealed
mystery. At Moco, which in itself combined the imagination of the
southerner and the imagination of the sailor, this allusion to a boat in calm
and silent water appealed more to strength than the full sight of a sea.
wreck on a deafening beach. 
The coral-crusted mast led the eye down until sight found the pale,
fish-like shape of the ship itself.
" Boufre,  " cried the Moco; "It's as thick as a funnel." Then he fell
silent like Jaques, and lying side by side on the dead grey coral of the reef,

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they gazed at the column of living coral that had once formed the mast of
a ship.    
The vessel was lying underneath unscathed in its front part,
otherwise, the mast would not have been left upright; driven years ago by
a great wave, it must have taken a step from the sea over the circled reef
of the lagoon, to sink, the water flowing through its broken woods, and
get lost here to always. 
Or, in recent days, there may have been a break in the reef that was
built long ago by the choppy coral. How she had found her last home who
could tell; which had been his business who could tell, but the trumpets
could not have proclaimed fate and death with more force than the
terrible silence, the vagueness in which the mast sank and wavered,
towards the ghostly ship.  
At about eight feet below the eaves, the mast was dressed algae,
showing that it and there the white coral crust; below, the algae did not
grow. The eight feet indicated the rise and fall of the tide, for the lagoon,
although showing no break in its encircling reef, communicated through
twenty invisible openings with the outer sea and filled and emptied at
high and low water like a great cullender.  
Flocks of painted fish occasionally gushed into the water and
vanished, algae growing from the mast swayed like an underwater wind,
now like ribbons of dark brown shade, now like a powdered drowned
woman's hair sparkling flowers; now a tree of keen the green would be
loosened by the fingers of the outgoing tide, catch a ray of sunshine and
show its beauty, or an amber tree.  
As they watched and the tide went lower inch by inch and foot by
foot, the hidden part of the mast adorned with corals and corals and
marine growth flew more clearly into view, and foot by foot the portion of
algae under the eaves stole water. and stood dripping wet and gloomy
under the sun, brighter and clearer like a grey cloud, fish-shaped and huge
in the green under the lost ship began to unfold in plain sight. It was like a
ghost coming, something darker but more wonderful to see. 
We could trace the mast now to the bridge. It springs from a colourful
column where grew here and there large sea fans that seemed made of
dark and dotted lace it and there all the colours, the bright red of the tiny
starfish to the delicate coral fishing bloom dish. So rich, so delicate, so

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opulent in colour, it could have been the column of a fairy palace, that old
mast of a forgotten ship.  
The two men, taking comfortable positions on the reef, had lighted
their pipes. Hour after hour, they sat smoking, exchanging a few words,
but still with their eyes alive for the changes in the water
below. Forgetting now to smoke, they lay down on their elbows and gazed
into the green depth were stronger in the shallow water, sharper, clearer,
the ship was beginning to show its hideous form to the sight of a man
swollen with the disease; grey, huge, smothered with coral, tufted with
what looked like fungal growths.   
“Look,” said Jaques, pointing to where the fantastically tall shit stood
in sight, “have you ever seen a ship built this way floating on the sea? Why
it is in Noah's time - In the church of Paimpol they have a model of a boat
like this; it was once dedicated to the Virgin… ”   
"Let's look," growled the Moco, speaking as if irritated by his
companion's voice; then he remained silent, his eyes fixed on the growing
vision below. The tide was now less than a foot from the low water line,
and as the veil lessened, the vision grew stronger; one could see the
bridges, all rough with coral, and the coral reefs which were once the
ramparts, the mainmast stump had remained and had turned into a coral
cone the height of a man; there was none of the mizzen masts.    

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CHAPTER III
EVENING
During all this time, as the tide went, the sun had set; he had fallen
through a dazzling azure sky and he was now almost in contact with the
western horizon, a ball of fire in a dazzling golden sky; momentarily the
gold of the sunset took possession of the sky, spreading upward, upward,
until the very zenith was reached, and downward, downward, until the
gilding reaches the eastern sky line. The world now seemed cut into the
cup of a great golden flower, and the little ripples that sighed around the
reefs at low tide showed their foam like fleeces of gold. Not a trace of a
cloud in the golden sky, not a wave on the golden sea; in this wonderful
sunset, the palm trees burned like fingers of flame, and as the music
illuminates the soul of man, so does the golden and luminous atmosphere
of the heart of the lagoon.     
The boat in the water below responded to the magic of light; the
thing that had been gray and gloomy like death instantly turned into a
dream of color, the frost-white coral brains turned into golden
lamps; starfish, sea flowers, coral growths, pink, crimson, indigo, pale
yellow, color and shape, all lent their adornment.  
Shadowless on her bed of dazzling sand, she hung for a moment,
burning in plain sight, clear in the eyes as if she were floating in the air and
exquisite like a jewel, then just as she had bloomed, she disappeared, her
color and beauty passing with the fading light, and as the night swept over
the sea like the shadow of a violet wing, it completely disappeared, while
the lagoon filled with darkness and the first stars cast their flicker on its
surface. 
" Well?  Jaques said getting up and stretching. The Moco, who had
also risen, looked around him at the world of darkness which had
displaced the world of gold; he had seen many things, but nothing that
had never struck his imagination so vividly as the sight now obscured by
darkness. His mind couldn't reason on the matter or logically refute the
feeling in his heart that what he had seen was wrong.      
All that cheerfulness and color decorating the ruin of human labor
was like laughter coming from under the sea.
Jaques didn't feel it.
“Come on,” said the Moco, turning towards the shore, “let's go back.
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As they walked through the brush, they talked about what they had
seen. Jaques thought that from the top of his shit, she must be very old, or
it could be only a very large deckhouse covered with coral; he slapped his
thigh as he walked, satisfied with the idea of snow; when a boy in Brittany
he had seen things piled up with snow and swollen, carts, barrels, etc., just
as the old boat was piled up and swollen with coral; but the comparison
was lost on Hubert; there is no snow in Montpellier; also his mind, more
carried away by precocious education and more flexible by heredity,
refused to draw images in a coarse mass; the colors pleased
him; “ Mordieu,  ” he said, “she almost reminds me of a flower boat that I
once saw dragged in the carnival procession in Montpellier.         
“Flowers”, says Jaques laughing, “where would you find flowers
under the sea?” Jaques' stupidity aroused the ever-ready anger of Hubert. 
“Of the devil, maybe - I wasn't talking about flowers under the sea; I
was talking about what I had seen in Montpellier. 
They had reached the southern beach, where the palm trees were
growing, and Jaques began to light a fire of dry brushwood; when it
burned, it piled up on wreckage; the coral ship, the wreck of
the Garonne  , their position, everything was banished from his mind by
the current affair.    
When supper was over, they each sat down with their backs to a
palm tree. The day's work was over. They had rigged a rough sort of tent
with the boat's sail and broken spars, but the hot night kept them out in
the open.  
The red light of the fire lit up the white sands a few feet from the
seashore, where the waves fell gently,
rhythmically, drowsily , Haassh - Haassh - Haassh - a cold dreamy
sound. Above, the sky full of stars, voiceless, windless, seemed something
more alive and active than the sea. From the slight elevation where they
sat, a ghostly white streak across the starry sea to the south indicated the
reef which had killed the Rhône  ; it was only at low tide and halfway
between high tide and ebb tide that the snow from the waves indicated
the murderer's position.     
"She had a lot of gold in her for Havana," said Jaques, breaking the
silence and nodding in the direction of the reef; "Seems a pity he should
be lying there under the sea and no one to spend it." 

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“Look here,” said Hubert, “it's strange that I thought of that bitch
lying in the lagoon over there.
"Yes?"
"I thought, maybe, there are things worth looking for on board her if
we could make it happen."
Jaques laughs.
“Yes, if you could do it - if you could do it - and she built with coral a
foot thick; and if you could drill it, what would you find? the bones of dead
men. It's like your flowers under the sea. " He took the point out of his
pipe, got up, stretched and turned towards the little tent, while Hubert
continued to smoke without a word; he could have hit Jaques.     
Son of a merchant from Montpellier, he still had some rudiments of
the education he had received before that fatal day when, driven by the
instinct to wander and the hatred of restraint, he fled to sea. Jaques, the
son of long generations of sailors, had gone to sea like a duck goes to a
pond. Hubert had been taken there by his imagination. He knew he was
superior to the carpenter Jaques, whose fingers were like hooks, who had
the manners of a bear and the walk of a walrus, but Jaques always proved
(by chance, no doubt) the best and the luckiest.   
He returned to the shelter of the tent where Jaques was already
snoring, he was sleeping and dreaming of the quays of Marseille, of
Anisette and of Jaques.

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CHAPTER IV
SPANISH GOLD
From the salty white sand of the beach to the east, and about two
hundred yards from the palm tree, a ridge of coral rocks flows into the sea
like a natural jetty. The water lay deep on these rocks and the fishing
would have been good if the castaways had lines and hooks. 
Hubert, the next day, at the end of the afternoon stood at the end of
this coral jetty, the sea of an incredible blue, protruding , desperate, came
glassy towards the shore in long gentle lines of swell, slobbery and sighing
by rocks and sadly breaking on the sands.
When the sea thus enters in long spaced ripples, a voice flies through
its voice, the something tragic, the quid obscurum  which hides in nature
and speaks through the elements and passions is heard. The sea has a
hundred voices, Gaiety, Triumph, Strength, Sadness, Regret, the wave
speaks them all. But stand on a day like this on a desolate island in the
tropics and listen to the voice that steals all that splendor of light and
cheerfulness of color, the violent and uplifted garbage of the water, the
triumphant sun, the sky of a living blue, through all of this you will hear a
voice, it is carried by the languid voice of the sea.    
It is the voice of loneliness.
Solitude - Destiny, Death, Tragedy - all this is eclipsed in front of her,
to escape from whom cling the very atoms of matter, animals join
together in herds, men in communities. 20 She who said to the man "I
walk beside you from the cradle to the grave, with me you come out of
the world alone, because of me you work out your destiny alone, by the
shores and the desolate plains of the north I show my face, near the
tropical sea, men hear my voice. It is I who make death terrible. It is I
who make love beautiful. Love my only enemy.    
Hubert, standing on the reef, heard the voice, his eyes were fixed on
the green water in the shade of the rocks, a albicore like a sparkling sword
had passed a moment ago, now there was nothing left to see that the
crystalline blur through which here and there floated a piece of
wrack. Just in that second, between the sound of the sea and the hypnotic
crystal of water, his mind heard loneliness speak. Just then he was vaguely
carried on him, and without awakening the true understanding, the tragic
fact of human isolation, the fact that every man is on a desert island

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surrounded by the sea of life, and that there alone he must work his
destiny, unless from some distant island, Love brings him help.  
The fact came to him as a sensation rather than a thought, the grave
harmonics of the sea had whispered to him this eternal truth, the fact
which is the main fact of life.
Suddenly from behind, as he stood there, looking down into the
depths, a voice made him turn. Jaques in the distance in the middle of the
low bushes beckoned and called out, capricious, gesticulated, threw his
arms out. Jaques seemed to have gone mad, and Hubert, walking along
the rocks, ran across the sand, and through the bushes towards him.  
Above the bushes, the air was trembling with heat, Jaques was much
further away than he appeared from the rocks; it was almost in the center
of the island, and now that Gaspar made his way through the bushes, he
saw that his companion was holding something in his hand. 
"Hurry up, lazy bones," cried Jaques, "and see what I found. He
waved the thing in the air, it was a belt with a brass buckle and an
attached pouch. He was laughing, one would have thought he had
stumbled upon a great, good fortune.  
He had.
“Look,” cried Jaques. He opened the purse, it was filled with large
gold coins; they had been wrapped in oilcloth, he had thrown the oilcloth
away and he was standing with his two large hands spread apart, gripping
the purse and the treasure that sprang from it.  
Hubert at the sight gave a cry that echoed across the islet and
responded by still gulling seagulls.
"Gold!" cried Hubert, seizing a piece of Jaques' hand. He examined
her, bit her, looked at her again. He appeared dazed and looked like a man
who, long trapped in the darkness, had suddenly found himself face to
face with a powerful light. The gold coin was Spanish, a piece of eight,
heavy and stamped with the majestic effigies of a deceased king.    
"Look!" cried Jaques, taking the coin from Hubert's hand and
replacing it in the pocket by the others. "Look!" As he buckled the stock
market, he pointed foot something in the middle of the bushes. Here the
bushes were thinner than elsewhere and here the ground was raised in a
small mound. In the midst of the bushes, white and desolate, lay
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bones. They were scattered here and there. One would have imagined

that here once lay a skeleton, the embers of a man on whom a wind had
blown and scattered. A skeleton, in fact, once was lying here, on or among
the bushes, but there is so long that the bushes are dying and becoming
again laid the separate fragments. The skeleton of a man; the skull which
Hubert had picked up and which he now held in his hand said so.           
It was a strange skull, small and deformed, hideously wide
cheekbones; the thigh bones easily recognizable even by the
inexperienced eyes of the sailors were of unequal length, the smallest of
them had been injured or broken, as it showed the thickening
where the callus had formed. 
" Pah !" cried Hubert, throwing his head down. “He must have been a
beauty whoever he is - and look. He picked up an old pistol barrel,
corroded with rust, the trigger plate thin as a leaf and crumbling like a
faded leaf to the touch. It took many years of exposure to eat away at
metal like that. Jaques looked at the thing without interest. "Come on," he
said, and turning around, he led the way to the south beach. Here, under
the palm trees, he sat down, opened the purse, and vibrated the gold
coins on the sand between his spread legs.       
Hubert, who had followed him without a word, stood up without a
word, looking.
Jaques counted the pieces; there were twenty-one and he was
disappointed; there had seemed more. He started to tell them. He had
hardly done it when Hubert broke the silence.    
“Look here,” said Hubert, “half of it comes back to me; half of it
belongs to me as of right. " 
Jaques stopped his account and looked up. Perhaps it was Hubert's
tone of voice rather than his words that caused the expression on his large
sunburnt face. A heavy and hostile expression, like the face of a the
croupier might wear when a bettor disputes the game.   
"Yours?" said Jaques, and who found them? 
“It's neither here nor there,” said the Moco, “you found them, that's
right, but it was just luck. I could have found them just as easily, and if I
had, I would have done actions. 

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Jaques knew it was a fact. Hubert was the soul of

generosity. Generosity was not predominant in Jaques' soul. He was a man
of good heart, but the Breton peasant was the first in its nature; he had
made this great gold fish entirely with his own hand, and now he was
called by a man more generous than himself to share it.    
He said nothing for a moment, but continued to count the
coins; then, as if I were addressing them, "Yes, it's easy to talk about luck -
but would I have found them if I had been lazy on the beach, or looking
out to sea like some people?" No, I was looking for dead brush, I was
doing something for a living, and I found it.  
"So keep them," cried Hubert, and, turning on his heels, he went
down to the seashore. He walked a little along the sand, then, with folded
arms, he looked at the sea. 
His mind had left the subject of money and clung to the real grievance
he had against Jaques. The poisonous source of hatred. Anisette.  
But the money grievance was there too, and suddenly by some
alchemy of Satan the hundred small and large grudges he had against his
companion came together and formed the figure of a monstrous Jaques, a
creature that 'he hated, and who, then the devil whispered, hated him.
The sun was now near his bed, and while Hubert was standing there,
idly watching the sea, the eternal cries of gulls took on a new
meaning; they said a new word:  
“Jaques , - Jaques, —Jaques.”
It seemed the seagulls were laughing at him.
“Jaques , - Jaques, —Jaques.”
He turned and walked up the sand to where Jaques was sitting under
the palm trees.
The sun was now setting on the road to Tampico in a living golden
sky, the western sea, leaping to meet it, lit up its splendor even to the very
shores of the islet; each foam flake looked like a primrose light flake and
the sands stretched like golden sands on the shores of the golden sea. 
Hubert approached Jaques, the splendor of the sunset on his face, his
hands clasped in his pockets, his lips dry.

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"All the same," said Hubert, as if continuing a conversation, "you are a

thief, and the son of a thief, I am more of a fool to chum with a Ponantaise
dog.
Jaques got up; he was a slow man with anger, but terrible when he
was awake. The belt and the purse containing the money lay at his
feet; he put them aside as he faced the Moco.   
"You say-"
"I say what I said."
“Like the monkeys,” Jaques replied, “who say what they've been
saying all day, forget it!  "  
The Moco had whipped the knife from the sheath of his belt. The two
men carried knives, but the Ponantaise had not drawn hers. He stood with
his arms crossed over his huge chest, literally as if he was feeding his
anger.  
"It is well known," said Jaques, his eye on the knife, "that a Moco and
a woman can only fight with their claws and their tongue."
Hubert let go of the knife; then he bent down and picked it up as if to
put it back in his belt; he looked half mad with rage and not knowing what
he was doing.  
It was the moment of his life; the next day, he could have put the
knife back in its scabbard and all would have been well, if Jaques, whose
anger had suddenly escaped his control, had spat a word at the Moco. 
A one-syllable word, one of those dead speech rats that these men
throw at each other jokingly, but when they are spoken angrily, it's worse
than a hit.
The Moco threw himself back as if a snake had hit him, then the knife
in his hand crossed the air and Jaques was on his back on the sand kicking,
coughing and hissing at the sky.
The knife had just touched the jugular vein of his neck; the air rushing
into the vein made a whistle, but Hubert knew nothing. He approached his
companion's body, fists clenched, prepared for battle, and certain that his
antagonist would leap to his feet and face him.  
Then he saw that Jaques was dying. To die of nothing, apparently, for
the knife was on the sand almost spotless and the struck man showed no
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injury to speak of, just a scratch on his neck from which black blood oozed
in foam. 
If Hubert had looked up west he would have seen that the great sun
was now cut in two by the sea, dying in a scene of indescribable splendor,
but he saw nothing, nothing but Jaques' face. .
He stood there for a moment, the last fiery rays of the sun casting its
shadow far into the sand. Then he knelt down beside the body, shaking it
by the arm, inviting it to wake up - to come to life! 

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CHAPTER V
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BUSHES
After the first fit of fiery and impetuous sorrow, the sorrow of a child
rather than the sorrow of a man, Hubert rose from where he had been
shot down by Jaques. The sun had long since passed from the sky and the
starry sea entered slowly, rhythmically, breaking into foam on the starry
sand, and there, on the sand, lay Jaques, listening to what the sea was
saying. 
His large, straight, clenched fist rested on his chest; one could have
imagined that the meaning of all this and the mystery of this sky so filled
with fire and passionate life, and this waste of the ever-agitated sea, had
been revealed to him at a prodigious moment, on which he had
struck . the breast in amazement of wonder as he watched and listened,
still before revelation forever. 
Jaques, from an ordinary man, had suddenly become part of the
immensity and the wonder of the night, of the stars without range and the
sea without bottom; and, for a moment, Hubert, standing in front of the
body of the man he had killed, saw death as prehistoric man saw it before
language deprived thought of its freshness and power. Only a moment,
then the stars became stars again, and the sea the sea, and Jaques' corpse
the body of a man he had killed in anger.  
And now that his southern nature was passed through an explosion
of wild grief as a child spends in an explosion of tears, the thought came
back. 
Well then? Whose fault was it?
The knife was thrown with no intention of killing - what right did he
have to die from a scratch like that? - and then the vile word - it was the
last of a long series of injuries. And little by little his mind came back as he
counted the score of these "wounds", went straight back to the tobacco-
smelling bar of Riga and to Anisette as he had seen her for the last time,
with his grimy little hand resting on the big one. Jaques' hairy paw. That
memory as a hideous lamp lit all his grievances, multiplying by two. No, he
wasn't to blame; he hadn't intended to kill, and if he had, God
of  God  , look at the provocation!      
He remained standing for a moment, his chin resting in his hand, his
eyes on the body before him; then he turned and, walking to the
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seashore, dipped his hands and washed his face in the foam. As he walked
up the beach towards the trees, wiping his dripping face with the sleeve of
his coat, he felt like all the events of the last hours had happened years
ago, so distant as they seemed. for the time being. The sight of the body
lying there so still in starlight caused him to pause. Sorrow rushed over
him, chasing all the little and bad things from his mind. He was standing
looking at his work. It was an accident; he hadn't wanted to kill; he didn't
even remember throwing the knife away. The act had been automatic and
committed in blind rage - he had killed Jaques all the same.         
Then, loathing the deal that needed to be done, he grabbed the body
of his dead companion by the shoulders and began to drag it towards the
bushes.
* * * * *    

Then he came out of the bushes, his task accomplished, he glanced at

the beach. He lay white in the starlight, and there was nothing more to say
about the tragedy except the knife lying there, as it had fallen after his
murderous work. He picked it up, dug it in the sand and put it back in its
scabbard. The belt with the silver purse was under the trees; it
automatically picked up and the carrying in his hand, turned to the small
tent.    
As he walked towards the tent, two heavy hands seemed to rest on
his shoulders; an unspeakable weariness had suddenly fallen on him,
depriving him of mind and almost movement, so that upon reaching the
tent he was staggering like a drunk. 
He slipped under the shelter of the tent and, with the belt and the
money beside him, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

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CHAPTER VI
ALONE
When he awoke the day was full and the sand beyond the tent
opening was white and blazing in the sun to the lazy blue sea.
He remembered everything at once. It almost seemed that his mind
behind the veil of sleep had reflected, for he had woken up saying to
himself out loud, and as if continuing a conversation, "Yes - and besides, I
saved his la. life. " He crawled out of the tent and straightened up under
his palms. The warm, balmy, sunny morning was all around him; the
sapphire sky and the shining sea; snow-white seagulls and snow-white
sand. A wind warm and soft waved the palm fronds. He gathered some dry
brushwood for the fire, lit it and piled up some wood from the
wreckage. When it was lit, flickering a hundred red tongues in the sun and
staining the blue air of smoke, Hubert was brought to his first break. What
use was the fire? He was not good as a cook. Jaques had been the
cook; he had cooked crabs, canned meat, and what-not, in using an old
box for a billy ; he was born for this kind of work and could do whatever
he wanted to practice ic.              
Jaques had always cooked under the eyes of Hubert. This fact struck
Hubert for the first time now. It was as if Jaques died still proclaiming his
superiority. Jaques had saved most of the stores, Jaques had chased away
the dead brush, Jaques had found crabs, Jaques had found the water
source, Jaques had found the sailing boat, Jaques had built the tent,
Jaques had found the boat of coral in the lagoon, Jaques had found the
gold. Jaques had done everything since their landing, and he, Hubert, had
done nothing but smoke and dream.     
Far from being a waste, he had, again, left everything to the tall blond
so full of energy and resources and joy of living; southern laziness had
possessed him. All the same, Jaques had proved that he was the best man
and was proving it now, speechless and dead among the bushes as he
was.  
Hubert set the fire to pieces and threw sand on the embers; then he
ate lunch with ship's biscuit and canned meat, lit his pipe, and strolled to
the seashore. 
It was eight o'clock and the hot, panting wind came over the morning
sea, the lazy, deep blue sea, so endless, so beautiful, so desolate.

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He stood up and, shading his eyes, scanned the horizon - not a trace
of veil or smoke could he see. The sky, a scorching emerald just above the
sea line, rose into the scorching blue, and from the sea and the sky, like
the breath of a big blue mouth, came the hot wind. It was like a woman's
warm fingers playing with her hair, like a woman's warm arm thrown
around her neck.  
From the southeast with the wind, now strong, now low, came the
cries of the seagulls. Although he had heard them since waking up, he
hadn't noticed them until now; he turned his eyes to where they were
rolling and flying white in the blue.  
This is when loneliness grips her heart. The fact of his total isolation
had not stood before him full square until now. The seagulls explained to
him.   
"You are alone! - alone! - alone! Hi! - Hello! - Hello! - You alone on the
sand! - Alone! - Alone! - we have nothing to do with you - we are nothing
to you - alone there on the sand - all day and night and day and night and
day, who will you talk to - what will you do? You alone there on the sand! -
alone! - alone!  
He slid his sleeve over his forehead to wipe away the sweat that had
suddenly started to tingle through his skin; then he cast his eyes again on
the featureless blue of the sea and, turning around, returned to the
tent. When he reached her, terror left him, suddenly falling to him like a
fallen cloak. He cursed himself for his stupidity and, although his pipe was
not half-exhausted, he patted the tobacco, refilled it and lit it. It was
something to do. Then, to chase the idea of Jaques, he began to imagine
what sort of boat would take him off the island, then he reached into the
tent and took out the belt and the silver purse. On the brass buckle of the
belt, all green with verdigris, there was something striped. He cleaned the
brass with sand - it was something to do - and made out what appeared to
be the initials "S. S.        
Even though he knew the number of pieces, he counted them over
and over again - it was something to do. Then he began to spend them on
fantasy, the memory of yesterday's tragedy still hanging like a ghost
behind his thoughts and trying to interfere. 
This occupation lasted him an hour, and he was suddenly brought
back by a stroke of heart. It was still morning; the dreadful day had hardly
progressed; the the cloak of solitude had fallen on him; the gulls were still
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Saint Kitts

crying, screaming, circling, rising, falling, fishing mechanically and seemed

to be part of an indefatigable mechanism shaking the voiceless blue of the
sky.     
He put the coins back in the pouch and threw the belt and pouch into
the tent; then he got up and walked towards the bushes. 
On the sand there was still a trace as if a heavy bag had been dragged
along towards the bushes.
He avoided the pointing of the sinister path and crossed the islet,
crushing the brush underfoot. He had no other purpose than to get away
from where he was, to keep moving - to do something. The heat was
heavy on the laurel cedars, the air quivered like a blanket under the fiery
rays of the sun, the bushes were dense, but in the blink of an eye he
seemed to have reached the northern beach. The islet seemed to have
taken him across to explain his smallness, and as he walked on the beach,
a new sensation caught him in its embrace. The feeling of being
surrounded, locked in a small circle from which there is no escape.    
Yet there were no bars, and around him each hand stretched out
endlessly.
He came along the reef forming the edge of the lagoon; the tide was
beginning to float and the bow of the ship stood stark and dry from the
water; the ship itself was clearly visible, in that light even more clearly
than in the glow of sunset. But the photo was much less beautiful.   
She looked gray and dead, lying there in the crystal clear emerald of
the water, but the lagoon this morning was cheerful with fish,
parrotfish, gropers , flocks of colored arrows, sapphires, rubies and ghosts.
emerald tinted.
The swell of the rising tide spread over the reef; closing his eyes one
might have imagined a giant shivering, catching his breath and sobbing to
himself. 
Hubert spent a long time observing the moving life of the lagoon,
absorbed, as a child could be in front of the contents of an aquarium. He
had forgotten the loneliness for a while, but she had not forgotten. As he
stood with his eyes fixed on a large fish, sapphire and misty gray, which
had grown like a spirit and was now suspended motionless with moving
gills above the ship, casting a vague shadow on the wooden deck. coral

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crust; as he stood looking at him, the breeze grew stronger, moving his
hair, and on the breeze a voice greeted him, far and weary.   
"Hi! Hi! Hi! - you are over there on the reef. Hi! Hi! Hi! - you alone
there! - alone! - alone! - see how the wind takes us, to the wheel, to the
fishing, forever - alone - alone - alone.     
He turned his face to where, on the other side of the islet, in the
distance in the blue, the white wings of the seagulls were blinking and
beckoning him; their voices, thinned by the distance, had a desolation
made even more desolate by the throat of the scorching blue sky, the
triumphant light of the sun, the licking of the hot, weak wind. 
There is no desolation as terrible as the desolation that lies in the
heat of summer and the blue sky. Here life should have been
superabundant, but here there was neither life nor anything in motion,
except the wind, the seagulls and the waves. 
"God!" said the Moco. He put his closed fist in his pocket and, turning
away from the lagoon, walked along the rocks to the shore.  
He returned to the south of the islet, not through the bushes, but
along the eastern seafront where the reefs were like rows of teeth and the
edges of rocks like razors. Here was that most of the wrecks Garonne  had
fallen to the ground, and here there was still enough wrecks,
truthfully. There was something to do.     
In an instant he was kneeling in the water. The Garonne  , when the
exploding boilers tore it to pieces, had thrown enough debris on the
water, but even still, as it lay below the surface, sinking more and more
completely to the ruin, the things were coming loose from her and rising
like bubbles. to raise a submerged body, and drifting ashore with the
tide. Hoops, boxes, spars, barrels beat in the waves. Heavy spars were
there, all chawed and frayed by the reefs; the coral teeth had left their
marks on everything; nothing was worth saving, but Hubert worked like a
port worker, pulling spars, lifting barrels, forgetting loneliness in the
exercise of manual labor.       
But she was there, and her voice spoke forever, subtle, like music
interpenetrating everything from the sound of the wave to the silence of
the sky, was heard again.

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Saint Kitts

Just as the force of friction causes a machine to stop, this voice, which
was part of the sunlight, part of the silence, part of the blue of the sea and
the sky, put Hubert on his feet.
He wiped his forehead and looked at the pile of things he had picked
up. He remembered how Jaques had worked at the same job, and now,
for the first time since the tragedy, as he gazed at the heap of spars and
wreckage, a feeling of pity came to his heart for the man who lay dead
among the cedar laurel bushes . 
The explosion of pain to which he had given in the day before was,
indeed, an outpouring of his southern nature; the anger suddenly stopped
and threw back by Death, overturned and bursting furiously at the sight of
the irreparable result of his anger.  
But this feeling of pity for Jaques came from the bottom of his soul,
for it was born out of pity for himself.
It was fatal for this feeling to enter his heart just now, for the heart,
softening towards the dead, opened the door to superstition.
He thought of the tent there under the palms and how nice it would
be if, on his return, he found Jaques sitting by the tent. Then, with a
shudder of horror, came the idea - how awful it would be if he found
Jaques sitting by the tent on his return! Her imaginative mind played with
that idea for a while, then hastily dismissed it. He laughed to reassure
himself, and the regular washing of the sea answered and the distant
seagulls. Then, letting the scoop white in the scorching sun, he walked
over to the south beach.    
No; there was no one by the tent, but the wind was playing with a
loose corner of the sailcloth, beating it. The tent seemed to beckon as he
approached across the blazing white sand. Everything, every sound, every
gesture of an animate or inanimate nature, began to have a deep and
extraordinary meaning for Hubert. The silence, the sun and the blue had
first conspired to show him his solitude; the seagulls had insisted on it,
rejoiced at it, explained it; but now, since there, near the wreck, pity
for Jaques and his fate had entered his heart, the seagulls, the silence, the
sun and the blue spoke a less assured language. "Are you
alone? Hi! You there on the sand, what it expects you? Hi! Hi! The wind
beats the tent? Ha! Ha! Hi!" - then silent for a moment, then, weak,
weary, quarrelsome , white spirits circling over there in the smoky blue of
midday - "Jaques - Jaques - Jaques".                
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The very poetry of Solitude, Distance, Blueness , Regret - fatal regret.

Hubert closed the flap, and the wind, as if annoyed to see his toy
stolen, shook the palm leaves, then part of the finest sand on the beach
gathered into a small devil of sand and danced on the wind. An invisible
hand seemed to move everywhere, now here, now there, touching the
sand, touching the trees, touching the cedar laurel bushes. Hubert,
stretched out his head in the shade of the tent resting after his effort,
listened to the faint crackling of palm leaves and the murmur of
sand; sometimes the tent's canvas would lift a little in the wind.   
It was only the wind, yet it moved like a living thing. Sometimes he
imagined a hand lifting the tent canvas and a voice saying, “Hi! What are
you doing here? ” He imagined Jaques as the possessor of the voice, and
he chased the imagination from his mind.   
Never for a moment did he feel the fear of the body lying there in the
middle of the bushes; it was not for the value of the Rhône  that he would
have crossed the bushes to look at it and see how it was in the hands of
corruption, but he was not afraid of it; on the contrary, it was the thing he
insisted on when he wanted to allay fear. For fear, weak and indefinable,
seized him now. He had no qualms about the part he had played in Jaques'
death. The thing was an accident, he told himself; all the same, men who
die brutally and violently have a habit of haunting the place where they
die.        
You can run away from a haunted house, but you cannot run from a
haunted island. This fear of not escaping was what formed the real basis
of his fear, something on which to build terrible and fantastic buildings. He
lit a pipe and, smoking it, fell asleep, waking up in about an hour,
refreshed and fearless. Sleep seemed to have erased the loneliness,
superstition and all the evils that accompanied them. He was hungry, and
took some canned meat and cookies from the grocery store that was near
the trees, ate some dinner, then lit a pipe.     
It was now half past three, the gulls had stopped crying and the
afternoon rested on the island like a warm, heavy hand. Thus still seemed
all that one could have imagined the islet enveloped in an idyllic
peace; but it was peace that brooded the fermentation. The air above the
sand was shaking in waves, and a slight buzz of insects came from the
bushes. A scorching and formidable pyramid of light loomed over nature,
crushing it to silence but unable to stifle its weak fret and whisper.    
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Saint Kitts

At four o'clock, Hubert was standing at the end of the little coral reef
jetty just where he was standing yesterday, when Jaques' voice called him
to see the treasure. There were no fish visible in the water today, nothing
was floating there except an occasional piece of seaweed. The clear water,
shining like a diamond and green like an emerald, caught the eye with the
fascination that resides in a crystal globe. There, at the end of the jutting
outcrop of the reef, with the sea on either side, it felt like standing on the
deck of a boat.   
It was nice here with the sea going gently around the rocks, barely
leaving a trace of foam, barely a trace of sound; the islet sang to the small
waves, but the reef was only gurgling, drooling slightly as a higher ridge of
swell licked the more exposed parts, and sighed as the flowing water
exposed weeds, hung shells and coralline growths.  
Hubert, standing, gazing into the green depths, mesmerized by their
crystal clearness and thinking of nothing, was suddenly brought back to
consciousness by the feeling that someone was standing near him. He
turned around. Nothing. The reef, islet, sea and sky were lifeless, but
distinctly he had had the impression that someone was standing behind
him, almost in contact with him, almost breathing on his neck; and he felt
that if he had turned more abruptly he would have seen the invisible; and
the reef, the islet, the sea and the sky, looked shabby for a moment, as if
they had managed to tear off the Invisible before it could be seen.     
The absurdity of this idea destroyed her almost as soon as she was
born. He shook off the sensation with a small shiver and, again casting his
eyes over the sea line as in search of a ship, he began to walk along the
reef to the shore. 
He was walking from the reef to the sand, when on the sand he saw
something that stopped his breathing. The imprint of a bare foot. 
It was a foot mark left by Jaques, and there was nothing supernatural
about it; it had been left the day before, and it was still crisp and clean, for
a ledge of the reef had protected it from the wind and the wind of the
sand; but for Hubert it was more terrible than the naked face of Death.  
He walked away from the terrible thing with his hand clutching his
heart, his eyes fixed side to side, not daring to look back. He didn't know
where he was going, but his feet led him to the clump of palm trees. 

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Here he set his back to a tree trunk. Terror was behind him and the

tree seemed to push it back. The tree was a living thing; suddenly she had
come out of the semi-inanimate world where trees dwell and flourish, and
had become a living personality. In his supreme terror, he could have
turned and kissed her, but he was afraid for a moment to move from his
position, just like a man afraid to move who, attacked by enemies, has his
back to the wall.    
Such terror does not last in its entirety for more than a brief period of
time. Reason came to his aid. He remembered that Jaques had passed the
end of the reef the day before. The foot mark was a real thing. No ghost
could have left him.    
He said that to himself when,
"Hi! Hi! Hi!"  
A strong, shrill, heartbreaking hail came right behind him. It was
Jaques' voice, and leaping to his feet with a cry, Hubert, clinging to the
tree trunk, looked. 
A large black warbird with shining eyes and a coral red beak passed
over the islet and greeted it as it passed.
Huge, defined and strong against the blue, even quieter in flight than
an arrow, it soared overhead without a wing movement.
As she passed, she greeted the island once more, and once again
from afar at sea, motionless, but rapidly diminishing until it became a faint
spot and lost itself in the blue to the south.
Hubert, breathing freely again, watched the great bird lose itself in
nothingness, lifting sail upon veil of sky , and horizon after horizon of sea,
bound for a port of call in the wind or beyond. 
The shock had been better than medicine for him, showing him his
own superstition and the stupidity of his alarm. The island suddenly
seemed free from the haunting presence; he began to doubt himself. If a
bird could laugh at him like that, he must be really mad.   
A year seemed to have passed since sunrise and the sun was now
falling over the sea, ending that vast blue day so filled with loneliness and
the terrors of the unknown.

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Saint Kitts

CHAPTER VII
THE BOAT
Most of us have never known the day as it is and the night as it
is. Protected from the wind and sunlight by walls and houses, by the
artificial light of darkness, by the words of truth, we have created an
artificial world in the midst of the real world. In the wind, in the sun, in the
sea, there are voices that speak a language long forgotten; lost when
thought, becoming vocal, installs its own language and a tower of Babel in
the world of dreams. Even still, when he is alone in the solitudes, on the
moors, on the mountains, by the sea, through all the noise of language
and thought, the voices are heard; the true and eternal voices that were
before us and will be when we are not.     
Voices of which all art, in marble, in tone or in words, is only pathetic
imitation, a tarnished, stifled and degraded echo. In this lies the eternal
despair of art. 
For the mind of the most ordinary man, if it is imaginative, the
language of eternal things is stronger than for the mind of the most
cultivated man if it is only imitative.
Hubert's mind was of the imaginative order. Until then, in the
forecastle or in the hold, in a ship or on land, he had been kept apart by
his fellows or protected by the common things of eternal
truths. Loneliness in its most extreme form had brought him into contact
with them; or at least from a whisper distance.   
43  The great blue day, now dying, had searched his heart and his
mind; it was as if the ancient gods of nature had landed on the island and
stood around him blind and puzzled him with whispers. Fear, air, distance,
light and sea had spoken to him in turn and in chorus; Loneliness had
echoed what they had said.   
There was something more in the wind, the sun, the sky and the sea
than he had known until then; the drinking bar, the forecastle, the sailors'
quarters, those black holes had hidden him from that
knowledge; degraded language in which the word "sea" meant docks and
ships, stoves and stoves, decks and glimpses of the ocean had paralyzed
and numbed her thinking. Twelve hours of loneliness and fear, face to face
with nature, had detached the old false labels from the truths of things

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and, without a glimpse of the true truths, a faint recognition of the

falsehoods troubled his mind.   
The overwhelming mesmerism of the language had suspended in part
for a while in this partially unsophisticated mind, and as he watched the
sun set in the Western Sea, the word "sunset" or the word "sea Never
occurred to him. He thought without language, lost in contemplation, like
an animal observing from afar a new and curious but not disturbing
phenomenon. 
And the view was great, for ten million cubic leagues of golden air
could do it. Fire, light and distance were there in this marriage of sun and
ocean; color, size, limit, everything was banished from the infinite and
indefinite universe of gold through which the golden sun sank into the sea
of gold.  
The sun had almost reached the sea line and for a moment the ocean
and the sun stood apart, the splendor of the sea responding to the
splendor of the sky. For a moment 44 seemed to cease and the supreme
silence, eternal, golden and beautiful, held the West in its custody.  
For a moment - then, blinking, throbbing, leaping like a woman under
a hot kiss, the great sea threw out its arms towards its lover.
Destroying it completely and almost in an instant, washing it away,
melting it as if the one that had been the fire had become wax and the
wax had been poured into a cauldron of boiling gold. Then, as if millions
of infinitely thin golden veils were lifted away with the speed of thought,
bluer and bluer, darker and darker, appeared the night behind them. 
A hand seemed to sprinkle and sprinkle the sky with stars.
You could hardly say, "It's dark," before night had taken hold of the
world and the night wind was blowing through the palm trees.
Hubert, getting up, stretched, then slipped under the shelter of the
tent; the opiate sea air and his weariness immediately brought sleep, a
deep and dreamless sleep that lasted until dawn. 
He was awakened by a sound.
Someone near the tent had, it seemed, struck a single blow on a
drum. He stood up on his arm; sleep had fallen from him like a cloak, and
his mind was again alert and alive with fear.  

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Saint Kitts

He listened, but heard nothing but the tired sound of the waves on
the beach.
Then, as he listened, it came back, but from afar. Boom! A monstrous
sound in this desolate place, alarming and strange like the sound of a
trumpet.  
If it was a drum note, then, judging by the sound, the drum must be
gargantuan size.
45  Sweat streaming down his face, he came out of the tent and
stood under the trees.
Nothing. The new moon had risen and floated like a small silver boat
among the stars; starlight flooded the sea and overflowed over the
foam. The sky with stars was so solid that the palm leaves clearly and
distinctly cut out their silhouettes. There has never been a more beautiful
southern night.    
As he stood up and listened, again, from a great distance this time,
the sound came.
Boom! As if the drummer had gone miles away across the sea to beat
his drum around the world before dawn. 
If Hubert had known these waters, the noise would have been less
terror for him. It was the sound of large demon fish, sea bats rising from
the water, quivering for a moment in the air, then falling, breaking the
waves into foam, with a sound that echoes for miles. But he didn't know
anything about sea bats, and he stood chasing in his mind the drummer
who had beaten that strange awakening  and his eyes fixed on the horizon
to the east where the sky was stained with the dawn.    
He came, killing the stars, a clear, cold hue, under a sky changing
color from smoky gray to aquamarine and icy blue. Then he blossomed in
the warmth and kindness of tone. Just as children hold buttercups against
each other to see the yellow reflection, one might assume that a hand
below the horizon held a vast buttercup on the pale face of dawn.  
A living golden thread flew along the sea line, became a fiery and
moving caterpillar, and suddenly the last stars were washed away,
dissolving in the blue and to an infinite distance, the sun was looking
through the water and then suddenly, 46 as if he had leaped up to the

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Saint Kitts

elbows and elbows resting on the sea line, he leaned forward and
smacked the world in the face with his big hand golden. 
If you had looked at Hubert, standing with the dawn wind blowing in
his hair, you would have seen the hand of the sun on his face, on the
palms behind him, on the sea in front of him, suddenly given like a blow. .
The same hand struck the Bahamas, and in a hundred blue ports,
from Cape Sable to Port of Spain, the masts of boats caught the
light. Martinique, Guadeloupe, Grenada, the peak, the hill and the valley
were already blazing there like green torches in the dawn wind. Key West
would be hit in an instant and the Gulf of Galveston and Tampico would
go from a lake of stars to a living sapphire, the Caribbean would leap alive
from Grand Cayman to Darien, from San Juan to La Guaira, alive and
scorching and blue. The wind that blew in Hubert's face, a wind that came
on the blue and the laughter of the morning sea like a wind of the golden
age and the youth of the world, kept the freshness for the orange groves
and gardens of all these western islands where the jessamines of the night
closed, the insects of the night ceasing their songs,   
Hubert knew nothing of this formidable poem in color that the dawn
shows to God each time it raises the darkness of the tropics; just now he
did not even see the sunrise and its splendor, he had for a moment even
forgotten his fears; her eyes were fixed on an object about a mile to the
southeast, something round and black that floated in the glare and glitter
of the water.  
It was like the head of a swimmer, and now it was like a drifting
buoy. He was getting closer, the current was leading him towards the
island, and now - it was like a boat. 
47  It was a boat!
There could be no mistake; it has suffered form alterations as it
writhes under the crashing waves, now facing the island, now almost
wide. 
A boat - free yourself from the islet and its dreams and terrors! The
cry which escaped from Hubert seemed to be echoed by the seagulls. 
He walked over to the coral reef jetty, running along the sand to it,
forgetting everything, never glancing over to where Jaques' footsteps had
been, climbing up the coral until he reached the end, where, surrounded
by the morning sea, wind and light, he covered his eyes and looked.
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Saint Kitts

The boat was now clearly in sight, dancing on the waves with the
lightness of a walnut shell on the ripple of a pond. It was empty and was
drifting towards the islet, but it would not touch the beach, it would pass
by a few hundred meters; he saw this and he prepared for the event by
getting rid of his clothes.  
It looked like a small boat halfway between a dinghy and a quarter
boat, and never to Hubert had anything seemed so gay in motion or so
friendly as this little craft dancing on the waves.
From a distance it had looked black, but now he saw it was painted
white; it was clinker, for the air was so clear he could see the overlapping
planks, and now as he prepared to take the water and swim towards it,
the terror of the islet he had shaken himself for a moment came behind
him again, and both held him back and pushed him forward. 
What if the Terror followed him into the sea? Behind him was a
mortal enemy filled with anger at his attempt to escape, and for a
moment the 48 powerlessness that comes to us in the nightmare kept
him shivering in the wind, the next he was in the sea , leaving for the
boat.  
He had to swim against the current that was carrying him, the waves
hitting him in the face like wet hands trying to push him away; but the
shock of the plunge had given him courage. 
The boat was close now, beautiful and floating, and white as a
seagull, hitting the sea as it came in, glistening with fog, the green water
beneath her clear as an emerald. Now she was just an arm's length away,
and now he was gripping the starboard kickback. She heeled back slightly
as he rested his elbow on the buttress and looked inside. It was empty of
everything except the bottom planks and a pair of skulls, cleaned with a
spray; a dead flying fish lay in the few inches of water she had shipped; he
had just died and had hit her maybe only an hour ago.    
He walked around the stern, boarded it, and straightened up.
He was finally free from the island, but he would have to land to
collect his clothes, some provisions and water.

49

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Saint Kitts

CHAPTER VIII
THE ESCAPE
He balanced for a moment, his eyes sweeping the line of the sky
southward, which showed no haze or speck of smoke, and as he stood he
heard the island call to him.
"Hi! Hi! Hi! You there in the boat! Back ! Back ! Hi! Do you
escape? Ha! Ha ! -Hi! Fishing, roll call, O fatigue, blue, waves, the wind, the
sun, they are ours and they are yours, forever - forever - forever. Hello!
"            
Through the voices of the gulls, the monotonous melody of the beach
crossed the luminous morning sea. The tent flap had come loose again and
waved. In any event, provisions and water must be taken on board and
the clothes he had left on the spar of the reef recovered.  
He felt like a man who had just escaped from a haunted house, but
he had to go back. Landing on that terrible place again and getting off the
ship while he searched for things was an act that required real courage,
but it had to be done. 
He pulled out the skiffs and, rowing towards the shore, skillfully ran
aground the boat. There was no danger in leaving her, for the tide was
coming down; the only danger was the delay, because if the water
receded too far, he could not put it back afloat until high tide.  
Jumping knee, he hoisted the nose a little higher on the sand, then
continued running like a man, he 50 walked to the tent, grabbed the belt
and purse money, made the heap of provisions, grabbed a bag of cookies
and tin, and full arms returned to the boat. 
It was a nightmare affair, for the vague fears of yesterday had
become more precise, as if the possibility of running away had given them
life. He felt Jaques behind him as he ran, sweating as he ran, from the boat
to the grocery store and back to the boat. An empty Garonne  water
breaker was lying near the tent. It had to be fulfilled; the spring was in the
midst of the bushes, and yet he was heading there, crushing the
undergrowth under his bare feet, his breath bursting, his lips dry as
sandstone. Jaques had not yet caught up with him, for, with the breaker
on his shoulder, he was running back to the boat. He threw it in; the
clothes now had to be retrieved, the worst part of the matter, as he was
fifty yards from the beach to the ridge of the reef and the clothes were at
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the end of the reef. But it had to be done, and he ran, sweating but
shivering, working to the craziest height of excitement, from the seashore
to the shore of the reef.         
He didn't have his boots on, he'd forgotten that, and the reef was
sharp and rough; there were edges like knives that had to be avoided, to
chase away the fear as best it could. It was the place where Jaques had
stood behind him for the first time in the imagination, and it was here,
now, that the terror of pursuit was most acute.  
Finally, bleeding, panting, his hands shaking, he reached for the
clothes. He put on the boots and, the coat, shirt, and pants under his left
arm, quickly came back along the reef, leaped onto the sand and, running,
shouting, gesturing with his free arm, walked towards the boat. 
51  He cried to the boat; she was there fairly safe and in full view; yet
blind hands seemed to be preparing to push her away; she would have left
before he reached her, the island would never let him escape.   
When he reached her, he brought his open hand back to the gunwale
as if to make sure she was really there, threw off his clothes and tried to
push her away.
The tide had fallen faster than he had imagined. She was firm on the
sand. It was a two-man business to float it and he never would have done
it if he had been alone; But he was not alone. Fear was with him.    
The boat gave in to his efforts, moving slightly, then more and more,
until it moved the stern and stern to the waves that lifted up and found
itself afloat.
He fell into her and she overcame the wire; but the waves were less
than two feet high and with one of the pair he managed to push it back,
then, grabbing the pair, he paddled. 
He was finally free from the island; sculls and current swept him away
from him in the deserts of the blue sea; the water, all gleeful with the
breeze, merrily slammed the boat and turned, in the sunlight, where the
palms rippled, and the foam broke and the seagulls called.  
“Come back! - come back! - you are leaving us, but our voices follow
you. Go as far as you can, our voices will follow you, our weariness, the
sun, the blue will be yours forever - you alone in the boat, where is Jaques
- Jaques - Jaques? 
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Then, further on, the last word, the last echo of the island,
“Jaques — Jaques — Jaques.”
52  Now, there was nothing but the passing of the wind, the sound of
the sculls and the chirping of the water. There were no waves here, the
shallows and reefs had made the sea rough near the island; here there
was only an uplift of the sea, long waves of swell, infinitely blue, strewn
with breeze and dazzled by the sun.  

53
CHAPTER IX
A STAR ON THE SEA
The island was dead, painted by the distance; the sky above the
horizon, paled with the indigo of the sea, was like a ring of sparkling
emerald; to the south, where the emerald passed into the living burning
sapphire of the sky, lay a line of white clouds, swan-white and like a flock
of flying swans, darkening with their suggestion of snow the blue of the
water, s 'deepening with their remoteness the distance.  
The warm wind blew steadily, sparkling the blue, the incredible blue
of the sea; the scull blades, plunged half a foot into the water, were tinged
with azure, the remains of floating seaweed were tinged with indigo; a
man floating a meter deep would have shown a form of lazulite.  
Hubert had drawn his skulls; free from the island now, what use was
there in rowing? He had no idea which way, North, South, East or
West. His only chance, he told himself, was to observe a ship. He was in
the hands of chance and he was not afraid. Not only that, but he felt in his
mind the certainty that before long he would be saved.     
The relief of his escape from the island may have had something to
do with this intuitive optimism, and the fact that he had enough provisions
and water to last him for days. The loneliness was gone; he had left her on
the island, her and Jaques.  
54  It seemed like a bad dream, it all, and Jaques was the worst
part. He felt neither pain nor compassion for what had happened. Why
should he? He did not want to kill and if he had wanted to kill, would he
not have been justified? He felt no remorse, none of that pity for the dead

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man that had come to him yesterday, when, standing by the reefs in the
east of the island, he had looked at the raffle pile he had saved. He had
suffered too much since then to have sentimental feelings on the
matter. Haunted and confused, he had escaped with his sanity more by
luck than anything else.      
He dressed and then sat down, rocked by the swell, drifting, the sun
rising higher towards the zenith, the wind blowing steadily from the
south-east, hot like a woman's breath. Every once in a while, a fish flying
like a silvery arrowhead would leave the sea, cross the air and disappear. 
Around noon, a school of them, driven out by some enemy, caused
the water to fall to starboard; we passed just over the boat, silent in flight,
swift, glowing against the blue, with staring blind eyes; a phantom of the
depths pursued by a phantom, defined for a moment and hard to the sight
like a jewel, gone like a phantom the next moment, remakes one with the
blue sea.  
The wind tempered the sun's heat, long bands of algae floated lazily,
and a turtle that had bathed in the sun was basking on the surface of the
water, slipped and disappeared as the boat approached. A large seagull
came to drift with the wind, passed with the silence of a moving cloud,
and was reduced to nothing in the blue towards the north. 
Nothing in the world of water and sky seemed to move 55 with the
effort, a deep languor filled all depths down to the heights above, the
small boat whispering and laughing on the ripples horizon
distances ; distances which showed nothing, which only told of summer,
the vague and the azure.  
Two hours before sunset, Hubert, getting up to have a better horizon
and shading his eyes with his hand, saw, in the distance on the eastern sea
line, a brilliant point burning like a star.

56
CHAPTER X
LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
It was a sail.

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Saint Kitts

He stood with his eyes still shaded, still without the movement of the
boat.
From there, a hand seemed to have reached his heart. The star so
firm and so motionless held him by its immobility and firmness. There,
where the sunlight showed the still point of light, there were crowded
bridges, curved spars, roaring sails, life, movement; a boat making its way
through the blue sea, lying in the breeze.   
It was all there. Here, nothing but a star poignantly marking the
vacancy from an unlimited distance. The wind had cooled, it was as if the
ship had sent him the joyful breath of life, the swelling water was happily
hitting the ship, and even as he watched the star grew, heaving steadily as
the mainsails joined the topsails above the sea line.  
As Hubert watched, his confidence and his confidence left him. The
blind faith in chance that had possessed him all day had vanished now that
chance had shown him the hand. 
Both and vividly his true position stood before him, and the horrible
odds of death therein, and, such a strange thing is the mind, now and for
the first time has made sense of his own wealth in possession of these
twenty -a large gold coin takes possession of him. Side by side 57 with the
fear of not being saved loomed the vision of the possibilities that were in
them. Each weighed up to three twenty-franc pieces. Six hundred and
three francs; what could he not do with that! It was the only great chance
he had ever come across on the path, and it would be doubly bitter to die
with his luck in his hands.      
And, again, as he watched, the sail grew. The ship was not as far as it
appeared; for the boat gave a low horizon. For this reason, too, she looked
taller than she really was. That she was heading straight for the boat, he
couldn't doubt, but he was torn with the fear that he would miss her, walk
past, not see him.    
His imaginative mind saw her pass, saw her disappear, saw himself
standing, calling and cursing her; The obsession was so intense that for a
moment, as he drew the picture, a searing anger rose in his heart towards
his captain, curses rose to his lips and sweat spread to his forehead. 
Then he wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat, and unable to stay
a moment longer laziness, took the sculls and walked to the point where
the ship was approaching.
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Saint Kitts

Useless, by the time he had his back turned on the sail, it was gone
from his mind as from his sight. He had to keep it in sight and changing
position with the sculls half-retracted, he sat down to watch. 
He did not have such a good seated horizon as he did standing, but
the sail had increased in size noticeably, even with the changed elevation
taken into account.
With a scull dive, he kept the boat so that it was always facing the
approaching vision, and so sitting the image in front of him resolved itself
into three parts: the back part of the boat, white, cleaned by the
spray , 58 and scorching in the sun except for the space covered by its
shadow; the blue of the sea and the sky; The boat.   
Sitting with the skiffs ready to correct the boat as it twisted in the
wind and current, his eyes shifted from the boat to the distant boat, from
the boat to the sea and the sky.
And yet it grew, like a child grows in the womb, like an idea in the
mind, adding limb to limb, meaning to meaning. He could now see the top
forward sail distinct from the forward path. She was a square-rigged
vessel as to the forward part, but coming as she was, the spread of the
fore sails and topsail obscured her rigging.  
It had also changed color; the frosty white star was now a truncated
pyramid of pale but brilliant pink, around which the deep blue heart of the
sky paled emerald in contrast. 
And yet it has grown, still or seeming not to move, becoming even
more defined, expanding as a bud expands, speechless and like a vision
developing in a dream.
Moment to moment, minute after minute. She might now be ten
miles away, or maybe more, her route would take her straight to the boat
and she would see it for sure if she had any  light  .   
It was his own shadow cast by the slanting rays of the sun on the seat
and the lower edge and the backlash that suggested the scary clause.
The sun was a little over an hour from its sunset; Would he cut the
sea line before the ship saw the boat? 
It was a race between the sun and the boat. He knew very well that
even if she came seemingly dead on him, the chances were that she could
far overtake him, and, as if the thought had thrown a curse at her, for a
45
Saint Kitts

long time she held on, never pretending not to 59 change size. Then, by
magic, she took the distinction, the mystery and the beauty left her; in half
an hour she became clearly defined, a small ship of maybe two hundred
tons, at a distance of about five miles. She wouldn't make more than eight
or nine knots.     
Hubert looked behind him at the sun. He had passed the ship, there
were still diameters between him and the horizon, but the blue of the
west was just beginning to turn, tinting a vague orange, as if an impalpable
haze of sea dust. gold rose from the sea. 
But now the ship, as the runner got tired when he was near the goal,
seemed to be struggling to reach it. From moment to moment, she leaped
closer, and the old stained sails that had lost the pink wave of distance
now seized the first touch of gold of the sunset. 
The eastern sky still held its blue, and against it the boat burned like a
golden ship, and in front of its bow the water divided like shimmering silk
cut by a golden sword.
Scarcely a mile away, she leaped more triumphantly into life, she
looked pockmarked; getting up and taking off his cloak, Hubert waved it,
screaming against the wind, delirious, forgetting the distance, forgetting
the sun and then - as if a bad wizard had touched her, she began to lose
her glow; she had seemed to leap towards him with outstretched golden
arms, triumphant, and seeking to save him, then, as if indifference had
suddenly seized her, she seemed to lose her momentum.  
He turned his head. God! the sun was gone, just a trace of fire
lingered under the gold of the sunset, through which, like a dark blue
wind, flew the night.  
* * * * *    

A ship's vessel had turned into a ghost lost in a world of violent

shadow. With the passage of the sun 60 the breeze fell in a gentle breath
of air. Then, in that moment of darkness and indecision, before the stars
had taken full possession of the sky, getting up and straining his eyes, he
couldn't see the ship at all.   
Ah! there she finally came, flying in the starlight with sails that were
just filling and then more clearly to see ten million stars lighting up the
sea, turning it into frosty silver. 

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At four knots with no light appearing, softly and seeming the very
embodiment of betrayal and escape, she came. She went through about
five lengths of cable to starboard and at Hubert, seizing the sculls, turned
the head of the boat to cut it. 
As he rowed he screamed, and if anyone on board heard him they
could have imagined him, his voice was so thin and harsh, the cry of a
seagull, but of all appearances, no one heard it, for not a light showed it.
Now she was inflating an enormous, a large ebony trapezoid cutting
the silver sky; he stopped rowing, yelled again and stopped to listen. She
was so close he could hear the washing of water from his front foot, the
squeaking of the blocks and the battening of the barely filled sails.  
Barely a length of cable and making to exceed it by half that distance,
it came, black as ebony, barquentine , silent as a phantom, furtive like a
thief. Then, as he greeted her again with a last desperate cry, she burst
into voice. 

61
CHAPTER XI
CAPTAIN WISDOM
A lantern threw its light on the port quarter, a voice scolded him from
the deck:
"Hi yi ow !" shrill like a bird, and at the cry, like a shaken hive, the
fellow stepped forward in life; the decks in an instant were a swarm,
banging like a tree full of monkeys, another lantern showed on the port
bow, and above the lantern a face black like a devil's face with glittering
eyeballs and white teeth was smiling on the boat below .  
The next moment something struck Hubert through the chest, it was
a rope; Seizing it, he held it back, and the little boat came rubbing against
the large wash wall of the vessel, carried with it on its slow path and just
under the wide channel of the forward mast. He grabbed the end of the
rope in the front seat, grabbed the belt with the gold purse and fastened it
to his waist; then, holding out his hand, he grabbed a channel plate and,
with the aid of another rope thrown by the chattering crowd above,
rocked on the channel. The next moment he was on the bridge.    

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The starlight dimly lit the bridges back and forth, he was surrounded
by Negroes swarming and chatting like monkeys; a man in the panama hat
who had helped him to the side, and who, scornfully, was now shouting
instructions in shrill French to a black man who had slipped into the boat,
seemed the only white man on board. 
62  After finishing his instructions, he turned around, kicked a negro
standing in his way, grabbed a lantern and, coming to Hubert, held out the
light to him as if he were a work of art that 'he wished to examine.
"French?" said the man in the panama, speaking in that language and
fixing Hubert with a pair of black beaded eyes. His face lit by the light of
the lantern was round, the air of good humor, the face of a good
bourgeois -  but the eyes froze Hubert for a moment before answering:    
"Yes, Frenchman, shipwrecked and floating in that damn boat until
you almost knocked me down."
" What ship ?
“The Garonne  of the Compagnie  Transatlantique  .”   
“The Rhône  ; I saw her in the port of Havana, is she lost then?   
“Yes, she ripped her butt off on a reef and left with everyone on
board.
"Are you the only one saved?"
"Yes."
“ Boufre  ! said the other, betraying his provence  in words. “A Moco
too, I was until I became a man of my own. Well, I saved you, and I'm
taking the boat  ! I am Captain Sagesse, and here is my boat La
Belle  Arlésienne  .            
He seized Hubert by the lapel of the coat, emphasizing the words with
emphasis.
“The boat is mine, you understand.
"Oh the boat, she's yours and welcome."
"It is worth five hundred francs, and a brush full of white paint will
remove the  name of the  Rhône  . I found you on a raft - no, on a hoop - no,
on a spar - ”he slipped his arm into Hubert's and led him to the back of the
deckhouse over the shit. “You were floating on a spar. 63 Here is the
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deckhouse. Come in. " He opened the deckhouse door, revealing a

comfortably but crudely furnished cabin. A table stood in the middle,
above the table hung a swinging lamp. Two opening doors aft gave access
to the cabins. captain and mate , tiny holes not much larger than dog
kennels. The captain threw his Panama hat on the table and Hubert sat
down and looked at his companion who was now opening a locker, and
was going to get a bottle of rum and glasses and a basket of ship's
biscuits. This round-faced, contented character had, from the first
moment of their acquaintance, invented and asked him to witness a
microscopic crime. He put his hand on the bag of gold. his sides and,
leaning on the table, he replied:              
"But, see here, this boat does not belong to the Rhône  at all ."   
The man in the panama had put things on the table, he turned
around.
"But you said-"
“Yes, but you haven't heard everything; I wrecked
the Garonne  too  , on a spar too, far on an island there, then the boat
came to float, she has no name on her that I have seen, I climbed in her
and I rowed - that's all. "   
" Besides,  " said Sagesse, pouring two glasses of rum, while Hubert
took a biscuit. The little man looked almost disappointed; one would have
thought that he regretted the lost chance of "making" the Transatlantic
Company  on a boat, then he took a Martinican cigar from his pocket, lit it
and, with his elbows on the table, began to speak and pose. questions.      
He asked questions without waiting for an answer, no, he answered
them sometimes himself , AS-     
64  “The Rhône  , I saw it in the port of Havana, what tonnage was
it? Oh, I know, seven thousand; she and the Roxelane  were sister
ships. Le Roxelane  regularly called to Saint-Pierre. Oh, yes, I should know
her, Martinique grew up like me. Not born, notice. No, I was born in Arles,
but I spent thirty years in these seas. You can make money in these seas,
but you can never forget the old land, and you were born in Montpellier,
you say, it's the same thing, and all Provençals are brothers. Do you think,
if I took a Dutchman or an Englishman, or even a Ponantaise, I would give
him rum in my cabin… ”Then softened by the rum and the presence of

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another Provençal, he leaned his elbows further on the table and kept

talking and asking questions without seeming to hear the answer.             

65
CHAPTER XII
RUM
He had done great things, Captain Sagesse had said, since the day
thirty years ago and more when, abandoning a French ship, he had settled
in Saint-Pierre. Starting at the bottom, he had made his way to relative
wealth and, while questioning Hubert, he interpolated fragments of his
own history. Captain Sagesse was the only subject of very deep interest to
Captain Sagesse; if he had gone to his own execution he would have
thrown fragments of his story to the crowd, it was a walking
autobiography, and it had been closed for three weeks, as the crew
consisted entirely of blacks , he had no one to open himself to. He
recounted how he worked the ship entirely with blacks, Barbadians, and
when he had exhausted his slight interest in Hubert and his story, he came
to himself, speaking as if Hubert was an old friend who had just come
from get on board, the southern freemasonry and a common cradle giving
him the familiarity of a long acquaintance. There was hardly a disreputable
transaction in which a ship's keel could find a place, but it seemed that
Captain Sagesse and his barque, the Belle  Arlésienne  , had been in it - a
gun in the Spanish War. American, contraband and worse. He owned the
ship, he owned property in Martinique and very questionable property in
Saint-Pierre; and now inspired by rum and what at first seemed 66 natural
naivety, he spoke of himself and his actions, his possessions and his
aspirations with characteristic strength and freedom.            
Hubert, at first half-sleepy with weariness, listened like a person in a
dream to the chatter of the other, then, the rum starting to take effect on
him, he found himself laughing at things that could have made him frown.
if we listened to him strict sobriety. He was quite a sinner, but in his little
life he had dealt frankly with his fellows, he had no feelings for a scoundrel
anyway, and Captain Sagesse was scoundrel enough, God knows, to judge
by his conversation. He had got the better of governments, men and
women; he gave no names, dates or places, speaking in his own way with
nothing more specific than: "It was an islet, it could have been fifty miles

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south or fifty miles north of Rum Cay. - but that doesn't matter, ”or“
Honorine, maybe that was her name, but it wasn't, anyway,   
Suddenly Hubert's brain, dozed off by the events of the day, cleared
up, the perception became acute, the sensation beatified, two glasses of
strong rum and the Martinican fight  that the captain had given him had
opened the door to the Brandy. Paradise; the deckhouse of the Belle
Arlésienne  seemed sumptuous, Sagesse the greatest of men and he,
Hubert Voulton, the equal of Sagesse.      
He held out his glass for more rum.
- And notice, says Wisdom in the side  , I input  this way
because mordieu  , I remembered these two words she uttered that night
to companion Bayonnaise  . They thought I was drunk, but I have never
been drunk in my life and I never forget.         
67  “Neither do I,” said Hubert, “I have never been drunk and I never
forget. The memory of Anisette and Jaques came back to him, and he hit
the table with his fist. “I served my man. No, I never forget. Now you're
listening… ”But Sagesse had gone on another side, a matter of money this
time, and Hubert swaying unsteadily in his seat, his eyes squirted, the
cigar at the corner of his mouth, and his fists clenched on his face. table in
front of him, sat down. hearing nothing, glorified in the hideous upheaval
of alcohol, filled with the splendor of his own importance, and tormented
on his throne by something, he didn't know what, but which took the form
of Jaques.    
It was the Marseille woman who still worked like a demon in her
heart and animated by drink. The feeling that another man had eliminated
him. That another man had been preferred to her. This other man was a
better animal even though this man was dead. Alcohol told him that he
was glorious, supreme, a man among men. Anisette like a pale, sneering
ghost said " Pshaw ." Where is Jaques. You  , you're nothing for a
woman.        
"And it was worth seven thousand dollars of American gold coin",
said Sagesse during his thread, when Hubert, whipping the belt and the
purse of his waist, made them fall on the table with a crash, so that the
gold coins deployed .
"Look at that," cried Hubert. "What are you saying? Wasn't that
worth the blow of a knife? Coins danced in front of him as he rocked in his
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seat, a sober man as a rule, weariness and strong old rum had done their
job.   
Wisdom stopped short in his story, stared at the belt and the gold,
then the man in front of him. Wisdom, however 68 he chatted about his
own actions, never by chance gave a man a grip to use against him; his
tales were also vague, all but their wickedness, like clouds; his only
weakness was to speak and he knew it and was careful not to do so, the
wickedness he boasted of were all apocryphal; based on dark deeds, just
as clouds are based on mountains, the villain in him had to boast, but
getting Wisdom to reserve one of his stories would be like trying to bring a
bird to earth by catching its shadow on ground.     
The men had tried to blackmail this storyteller  on the strength of his
statements; bringing the vulture back to earth by catching its shadow, only
to find itself in the vulture's grip, was blackmailed most cruelly. And he
never let go as long as his clutch was on, and there was a feather on the
victim. But if he chatted about fables, he knew when to shut up in the face
of the facts. He was silent now. He laughed but didn't say anything for a
moment, while Hubert, putting the pieces together in a pile, repeated his
question.       
"What you say - isn't it worth the stab of a knife? - given in fair
combat, you notice, man to man, and the best wins." Wisdom reached
out, took a coin, examined it, and returned it. 
“ Good  God  , yes. So you killed him - but where did these things come
from, they are not coins today. So had he stolen a museum?    
Hubert nodded with drunken gravity.
"That's it, you hit him, he stole someone from them and didn't want
to share, it was over there on the island.
" Aha, " said Wisdom. "So you killed him on the island, vé  , but you're
a man after my heart, the island - and your man's name that you said
was…"   
69  "Jaques."
Exhausted Hubert, falling into the third stage of intoxication, was now
leaning over the table, his eyelids drooping, the cigar tip, more lit, held
loosely in his nerveless fingers.

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"Jaques - and what note was he?"

"Captain."
"So… but he had another name, his name wasn't just Jaques?"
"What you say?" asked Hubert, waking up slightly. 
Wisdom repeated his question, but the man at the table did not seem
to understand, then, overcome with sleep, he let himself fall completely
forward, his head resting his cheek right on the table, his right hand on the
purse containing the money. Sagesse looked at him contemplatively for a
moment, then he walked to the door and shouted: "Jules". A rustle came
along the deck, and a fat negro, barefoot and bare chest, with his wool all
tied in little knots, appeared at the door.  
Wisdom pointed to the man at the table, and Jules with a wide smile
but without a word, entered and took the dreamer by the shoulders,
Wisdom took him by the feet, and between them they carried him to the
starboard dog hole, which did duty for a companion's cabin when a
companion was on board. Here they put him in the bunk, Wisdom put the
belt and the silver purse in the bunk next to him, then they closed the
door on him and let him sleep. 
When Wisdom found himself alone, he took a card from a locker,
spread it out on the table, and reviewed it.
Hubert had told him that he had only drifted since morning. If that
were the case, if the man was not lying, and if, indeed, he had left an
island that morning there, so the only island that could have left here was
marked on 70 the map, a small coral island assaulted to the north, south
and east; about eighty miles southeast of Turks Island.   
Wisdom knew the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic which includes the
Bahamas too, almost as he knew the heart of the lower order of
humanity. He knew from his own knowledge, and leaving the map aside,
that there was only one islet around which a boat could drift or be rowed
in a day to the point where he had taken his news. knowledge. He also
knew the island from sight, the clump of seven palm trees, the white sand
beach and the murderous reefs. He had seen it through the glass several
times in recent years. He had counted the palms, seven of them. He never
forgot anything; this was partly why, with a prominent hand in
the French merchant navy , he had risen to wealth and eminence of a

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kind. He took a quill and an ink horn from the locker, and made just above
the island the shape of a tiny cross, then he put the map down,       
The moon had risen, still a crescent but strong enough to flood the
sea with light. Jules had relieved the man behind the wheel, and stood a
dark ghost in front of the yellow light of the cockpit, the wind still held
and had even strengthened a little, and in the silence of the night the
clicking of the chain of rudder, the washing of water in the bow, and the
occasional whine of hemp rope and block could be heard. 
The barquentine seemed to be talking to herself in a low voice. Old
and tired of the sea, clothed in canvas, patched and stained and ill-fitting,
barn and dripping with weeds from the south of her copper, she crossed
the water in the moonlight, heading now, to make the passage between
Haiti and Porto Rico; an ocean witch groping from port to port, now in
honest business, now smuggled, from Yucatan to Port of Spain.  

71
CHAPTER XIII
THE BELLE ARLÉSIENNE
Around six o'clock the next morning, Hubert awoke from his sleep,
half suffocated by the air near the little hut where Sagesse had placed
him. The taste of rum was still in his mouth, and all of a sudden, and
almost to the return of consciousness, the facts of last night dawned
before him - to a point. He remembered Wisdom's conversation, he
remembered taking the belt from his waist and throwing it and the silver
purse on the table, but beyond that point he remembered nothing.  
He put his hand on her waist, the belt and the bag were gone. He got
his legs out of the bunk, and was just getting up when his hand rested on
something hard, it was the pocket. It had not been tampered with, he
could tell by the sensation, but, to be sure, he opened it and counted the
gold coins in the dim light that shone through the porthole above his
head.  
Yes, the twenty-one gold pieces were there, solid, shiny, and hard. He
put the belt around his waist and buttoning his coat on the pocket arrived
on the deck. 

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Saint Kitts

The Belle  Arlésienne  , upwind  under all sails, was making eight full
knots heading SSE with the coast of Haiti a line on the southern
horizon. She had changed course during the night and she was now lying
with the shoals and reefs south of the Turkish Island over her harbor area,
but nothing of them showed, for the sea above this.
subcutaneously 72 newborn sun lying like a flaming jewel, a crystal
corrugated sheet, each of the million million facets was a mirror; then,
from there to the place where the bowsprit pushed the sky above the line
of sea, the sea, without veil nor sign of life deepening in the blue, where
the distant Haitian coast lay the colored hyacinth the morning.    
Hubert looked around him, he saw no sign of Wisdom; a negro clad in
canvas trousers held by a single strap, stood at the wheel, several others
were grouped around the horse's head busy with business, and a thin trail
of smoke from the caboose told of the breakfast in progress . 
From where he stood, the deck was clear of all load and barred by the
shadows of the standing rigging; they had taken the boat on board, and
she was lying upside down on the deck forward of the mainmast. 
Despite her age, despite the decks so yellow stained by time that the
board and the ankle were the same color and indistinguishable, despite
the sails all cut and patched, the old barquentine still had an air of
buoyancy and life captured by the sea. brave morning light and the azure
flooding the sea and the sky.
The smell of tar, wedge and rope, the groan of rubber and the creak
of the mast brought for Hubert the vision of Tamalpa  and his youth. No
other feeling is like the feeling of a sailboat underfoot. The liner is a dead
weight dragged down by a foreign force, its progress is a continual insult
to the wind and the sea, but the sailboat is one with the sea and the wind,
its movement is fluid, cool and is part of the eternal movement of
nature. While Hubert stood with his eyes fixed on the distant Haitian
coast, Sagesse got out of the deckhouse and greeted him.     
73  The captain had a telescope in hand and, standing beside Hubert,
he began to scrutinize the coast through the glass.
He doesn't say a word about the debates last night. He would stand
picking out the points and headlands of the coast, noticing them every
now and then, and every now and then throwing a piece of reminiscence,
like "Over there - you can just see that bluish spot, it goes deep in. the

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land there -. this is a big English ship went on the rocks the Severn  in the
storm 82. I helped the salving . My  faith  , I have never seen such a big
boat with her back so broken. It was open like a music box. It was also full
of headgear. New York fashion for Jamaica; the rocks were dressed in
muslin, it was like the wreckage of Bon Marché  , and the negresses came
to help you, you can imagine! or "This point, you can just see it with
the eye east 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 throwing
the money on the table, I remember saying something about Jaques - but
what? Did I say a lot, did I say a little? And the money, he had to pick it up
and put it in the bag and put the bag and belt beside me while I was
lying  in the bunk, I was pig - mordieu  - qu'est-  that I said? These thoughts
roamed Hubert's mind as he looked at his companion and listened to his
remarks almost without understanding them.          
But Wisdom, whatever he knew, showed nothing of his
knowledge. He chatted familiarly and easily, and when breakfast was
brought aft by Jules, they sat there, and over steaming coffee and fried
bacon and bananas, the captain continued his relaxed speech, chatting
about 74 everything and nothing, but still with interest.  
The black rim had shut down her conversation, it was only at night
that she seemed sharpened by alcohol, for Wisdom was a methodical
drinker, not looking at the bottle until absinthe time.
During the meal, Hubert made a job offer, but Sagesse did not hear of
it.
"You are a Provencal brother, well, I picked you up floating on the sea
and that's all, I have more than enough hands to work the boat, and your
food, what is that cost? In addition, we can settle in Saint-Pierre. Saint-
Pierre, Martinique, yes it is my port. Have you never been
there? Ah, mordieu  , so you've never seen life, you'll see it in Saint-Pierre
where men can laugh, and love is as cheap as bananas.      
"Well, I can pay you," said Hubert, "that is to say, if I can ever pay you
for everything you have done for me."
Wisdom laughs.
His face, usually pleasant apart from a certain fixedness in the eyes,
lost its pleasant side in a strange way when he laughed.
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Saint Kitts

Clean shaven, except for a rather heavy and drooping mustache,

plump and tanned, in a white cap and apron, apart from his tan, he would
have made an ideal chef; a concocteur and sauces to desserts  , greasy
steam from his kitchen; but when he laughed he bared his teeth and that
single touch destroyed his good-naturedness  , for his laughter did not go
beyond his mouth, and laughter is inhuman when the eyes do not correct
the teeth.      
All day long they kept the Haitian coast on the distant horizon, the
water was blue off the island, but in Hubert, as it hung sideways, it looked
like this water was 75 even more blue. It was; the Caribbean, this great
lake of burning indigo, sent its color to meet them, the flakes of foam from
the forefoot of the Belle Arlésienne  passed like marble shavings cast on
lapis lazuli slabs, and the violets would have appeared pale and faded
when held against the backdrop of the sea to the south.     

76
CHAPTER XIV
THE MONEY CHANGER
Hubert, although an adult man and a man moreover, who has spent
his life in contact with the brutal side of things, still had a lot of the child in
his nature. The Provençal rarely ages, it finally dries up in the sun and
comes to die, but the child in it remains a child; imaginative, impulsive,
easily moved by laughter or tears, good or bad, with a passion for color,
movement, sound and exaggeration. And so he remains a poet in his own
way.   
Go around the earth, and you will find the man imitating the insect in
that he is the color of the leaf on which he was born. Hubert was the color
of Provence, and all the coal dust in the cave, the sordidity of life had not
altered its essential color; something tragic, cheerful, vivacious, lazy that is
part of the southern land of black shadows, white roads, blue sky, lively
mistral and flowers with poignant scents still clinging to his personality.  
Even Wisdom showed a trace of it in the exaggeration of his own
actions, in his vivacity and in the flower he wore in his buttonhole on the
ground.

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But there were few children on Wisdom and a large part of the
teacher. Gradually, as the day followed, and operation of the vessel
showed increasingly Hubert, astonishment fills the extraordinary discipline
in the mid 77 's hands and how the Wisdom worked. When he was out of
sight they would shout and chat to each other, but the instant he
appeared silence took over the bridge as he took on a grove of chattering
birds when a falcon appeared in the sky above. of their head. Orders were
carried out on the run, but he never swore or raised his voice louder than
necessary; from time to time, when a man got in the way, like the night
when Hubert got on the ship, he kicked him like a master could kick a dog,
but beyond that from that his rule seemed benevolent. They were all
Barbadians, blacks and English speakers, except Jules who was of Haitian
origin, but Wisdom could speak to them fluently in their own language. He
could speak four languages, French, Spanish, English and Portuguese; he
had chosen the three foreign languages as a means of commerce,        
One night, sensual and cloudless with the sea like silver frosted under
the light of the stars and the warm breath of the wind, Hubert, entering
the deckhouse, found Wisdom sitting at the table in front of a map.
“If this wind holds up,” says Sagesse, “we should see Martinique at
dawn. He spoke with his eyes on the map, then, looking up, "What do you
propose to do when you get there?" 
"Oh, I don't know," said Hubert, taking a seat opposite the
other. " Report to the Transatlantic Company -  withdraw what I have to
pay and try to get a reward for my kit."     
“Well,” said Wisdom, “if I were you I would let it all slip away.
"How? 'Or' What?"
" My  faith  , how? ... don't say anything, or as little as you can, speak
up, but don't worry about the compensation.  
78  "And why?"
Wisdom laughs: “Because my friend, it is not good to stir muddy
water; you show up in front of one of these hellish clerks with a pen in
your hand, and he takes note of what you say, you ask for compensation
and he says, `` Yes, yes, that's right, compensation, yes, but first my friend,
prove that you are who you say you are and give us your story in
detail. Then with the tip of his pen he turns you upside down and,

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"Wisdom said, tapping on the table with his thumb ," it is not good to be
turned over if you have something to hide.  
"Hide?"
"For example," continued Sagesse, "the official of the Transatlantic
Company  might say:" Who was your chief engineer, who was your second
engineer, you had a friend, what was his name? ". Wisdom watching
Hubert barely saw the sweat on his forehead, laughed and finished, "and
you wouldn't say: 'His name is Jaques, he escaped with me, we landed on
an island, he had a waist belt and a pouch containing a number of precious
gold coins that he had stolen, and I killed him and took the money. You
might not say that with your tongue, but your face might give a clue, or
your manner, and a clue might lead to a suspicion, and a hint to a search
- you should have burned that  body  .      
Hubert, staring at the man in front of him, had the impression that an
icy blade had been driven into his heart, his flesh crawling. So he had told
this man everything, and more than anything. He did not feel anything like
the criminal whose crime was discovered feels because he felt innocent of
any crime or criminal intent. It was the horror of the fact that he had
given, and under the influence of drink had described the case in such a
way 79 that Wisdom believed a murderer, that's what paralyzed him for
now .    
For only a moment then, pushing his hands as if something was
slipping from him, he burst out, "I didn't kill him for money, that's a lie." If
I said so, I lied - it was an accident. Sure, we had a fight over the money,
but I didn't kill him for it. The knife only scratched him and he fell. I had
saved his life; does a man murder another whose life he saved? When I
spoke I was mad at your damn drink. If I had killed him, would I have told
it? I didn't kill him for money - do you believe me?        
“My friend,” Wisdom replied unmoved, “I believe you. But you
yourself admit that you killed him. 
“Yes, by accident.
"And took his money?"
“It didn't belong to him. He had just found it among the bushes, the
belt and the pouch. Why are you shaking your head, don't you believe
me?  

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"Whether I believe you or not, does that matter…?" This man had

found the money, you killed him - by accident, with a knife, and you took
his money. Doesn't your reason tell you that such a story is enough to
hang the Archbishop of Paris - but that's all your business, and as I just
said, my advice is to let it lie. Don't disturb dead bones . Let’s forget about
that and be practical. If I wanted, I could hand you over to the authorities
in Martinique tomorrow. I marked on the map the position where you
embarked me and the position of this island, which is the only one
nearby. But it wouldn't be the slightest profit for me to get you in
trouble. Not the least. I would help you much sooner. Well, business. This
money will be your worst friend, instead of your best if you try to
use 80 it's down as it is, you have to change it for good US dollars. Put it
on the table and I'll change it for you.             
"Before God," Hubert burst out, "I won't do anything unless you
believe me when I say that I came this way correctly, that there is no
blood stain on it, that what happened. spent there on the island was an
accident, and that I am not a murderer!
Wisdom, who knew the man inside out, and who from the first
morning of their acquaintance had studied him minutely, rose and slapped
her right hand on the palm of the highest table.
"I believe you, there, the words are pronounced and let us not say
more on the question - how far the others would believe you, it is not for
me to say it, but there, that the matter stops and get back to business.
He sat down and Hubert, opening the purse to his waist, placed the
coins on the table in a heap.
Wisdom counted them. “ God,  ” he said, holding one in his hand and
examining it. “Want to change this lot at a banker or a bureau
de  change  , they would be enough to raise a blister on the reputation of a
saint. I can however get rid of it; with difficulty it's true, but I can still get
rid of it. But I do n't take risks without a chance for good profits. I'll give
you forty dollars for the lot.          
"Less than two dollars each?"
"Slightly."
" Mordieu,  " said Hubert. "I'll throw them overboard right away."   

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Wisdom rested both her elbows on the table and laughed. Then the
bargaining began. Hubert, the son of a merchant, had something of the
businessman in his nature. It was a strange image, and not without its
romantic side. Both Southern seated opposite each other 81 to Table
deckhouse seedy, the swing lamp above the head throwing its light on the
area map, the gold and the tired faces merchants.     
One could imagine that Wisdom, having the game, apparently, in her
hands, would have forced her conditions on the other; but that would be
without counting on the character of the captain and the laws which
govern his life. “Never appeal to social laws except in the last end. Never
use force against a man stronger than you. Take the pyx , but leave the
chalice to the priest (in other words, do not strip a man so much that he
turns on you in desperation) ”- these are three of the laws governing the
actions of this sage. He was a scoundrelism artist because he knew the
value of restraint.     
"Sixty dollars, then," said Wisdom, after haggling for half an hour or
more. "You're okay, well, sure I'll make my profit on them, but what would
you have?" I am a trader, vé  -, and I will give you more than sixty
dollars; I'll give you some advice.     
"Yes?"
“Don't go back into the hold. With sixty dollars in Martinique, you can
start a small business. Go part in a fishing boat, sell fruit, you are young
and active, and in Martinique, sixty dollars are worth six hundred in Havre
or in Paris. I'll show you the ropes, as the English say. Do you know, sir,
that I, Pierre Sagesse, started with my advice and helped a dozen
Martinicans who are now prospering?    
He had stood up, and all the time he was talking, he was looking in
the locker where he kept his cards. Finally he took out a small bag of
chamois and, opening it, threw the money it contained on the table. The
little bag contained exactly sixty dollars in gold and silver coins.  
82  " My  faith  , the exact amount; this is strange and should be a sign
of luck. Here is your money, and I will not take the belt or the purse; you
can keep them.     
Hubert pocketed the money. It was more than strange that the small
chamois leather bag contained the exact sum in question. It was certain

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that Wisdom, a few days before, had solved the problem of what he had
to pay for the coins and had put this sum in working order.  
The character of the man was revealed in this act, as also in the way
he had kept silence about Jaques until the moment of his design.
Hubert was convinced that if it had suited his interests, Sagesse
would have betrayed him to the authorities. He left the deckhouse and,
leaning against the starboard bulwarks, gazed at the starry sea. 
Although he left the island to the Blue Leagues behind, she still
pursued him, and, in the form of Wisdom, still had a hold over him, the
island and the deed committed there.
He could still see him, as he had seen him when he escaped. The
sunny palm trees, the white beach, the white waves crashing on the
beach, the white seagulls - he could hear their voices calling him. 
"Hi hi hi ! You there in the boat! Back ! Back ! Hi! Do
you escape? Ha! Ha! Hi! Fishing, roll ! Call ! O weariness, blue, waves,
wind, the sun. They are ours and they are yours forever - forever -
forever. Hello ! "              

83
CHAPTER XV
THE MAGIC CITY
He was awakened the next morning by the roar of the anchor chain
through the splash pipe.
Five minutes later he was on the bridge.
La Belle Arlésienne  , led by magical hands during the night, had raised
a magical horizon and passed it to anchor in paradise. It seemed to her as
her eyes traveled from the cloudy turban of the dawn-colored Mount
Pelee, and followed the tumultuous woods, the cascades of foliage leaping
high, far, dark in the shadows, falling over the hillside town. ; and the city
standing out from the woods, falling street after street to the edge of the
harbor; palm trees above the red tiled roofs; houses, shadows, palm
trees; intertwining gardens, squares, flights step by step from street to
street; ancient flights of mossy steps, old gardens and bits of gardens
sheltering the grenadilla and the love flower; old houses, heavy and lightly
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colored, all stretching from the tall tall woods to the very edge of the
shady harbor in whose depths the blue of the night still lay.       
The blue of the night - although the sky above Pelee was on fire with
the blue of the morning. To the east of the island, at Grande Anse, the
morning was already full and splendid, but here the shadow of the peak
and the morning held everything in a magical chiara  oscuro  . The city,
seen as through a veil wave gauze, seemed asleep, but 84 he burned to
life early in the morning, and Hubert, while watching, could see the
moving figures of people, shapes dripping on the steep stairs leading to
street to street, and swarming by the steps and the port.        
Held, just a moment, in that curious twilight that lingered in Pelee's
shadow, while all the marine world beyond shone in the tropical sun, the
old maritime town of St.Peter suspended, literally, between the sea. sea,
between dawn and night, between the present and the past, showed to
the mind those images of suggestion which are found in the tapestry and
the verse.
Hubert had never seen anything like it. He had seen many tropical
towns where the galvanized tin roof of the merchant, or the stark outlines
of the Methodist meeting house grossly shattered the beauty of palm
kernel and orange. But Saint-Pierre was magnificent before him ,
absolutely magnificent, like a dream city in wonderland.  
Nothing could be more marvelous than these torrential woods above
houses, woods of balisier and palm, tamarind, ceiba and giant fern; rope
of thick lianas, air gushes, all climbing in the twilight, and leading the eyes
towards the slopes of Pelee and the peak, shrouded in clouds and burning
in the blue. 
Nothing stranger or more poetic than the city stretching from these
woods to the shady sea.
Other ships were anchored in the harbor, boats were leaving the
shore; now, clear and sharp, through the vague noises of the early
morning came the note of a bugle from the fort, and from a sailboat on
the starboard side the click of the capstan pawls and the cry of the sailors
pulling on the halyards. 
With and through everything came the scent of earth, land and
tropical flowers, scents of jasmine and vanilla, mingled with the scent of
the sea.
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85  Hubert turned away from the city and looked west. Beyond the
island's shadow, the sea lay in the daylight, showing beneath the emerald
ring of the horizon the pristine blue of the early morning. 
Turning around, Wisdom left the deckhouse and stared at the ground
for a moment before speaking to his companion.
"Better than the stokehold ," said the captain, who had put on a clean
white drill suit, and a way to disembark and vacation; “Better than the
engine room, vé  ! Look, the boaters  are late  and the port officers will be
on board before we finish breakfast.        
Jules appeared, speaking, from the caboose , carrying a steaming
coffee-pot; they entered the deckhouse for the meal, and before half and,
as if to confirm the truth of Wisdom's prediction, the port officers arrived. 
They entered the deckhouse, where Sagesse served them vermouth
and cigarettes; they seemed to know Sagesse like a friend, and the bill of
lading or the health bulletin seemed to bother them very little as far as
Hubert could judge, who, in the midst of smoking and exchanging news,
left Sagesse to his friends and came to the bridge. 
He found a new Saint-Pierre. The color had flown on the slopes of
Pelee; the light had extended its hand and tore the veil of twilight. A burst
of blue hit him in the face as he left the dingy deckhouse. A blue sky, a
blue sea, triumphant, crystalline, dazzling, and in the middle of this world
of leaping lazulite, Saint-Pierre standing like a dreamer awakened by the
sea.    
Awake from where the high woods swayed and sang in the morning
wind, where the breeze swept across the harbor licked the ship's edge
and the quay with a sheen of sapphire satin. 
You could see, the air was so clear, the tiles on the red tiled roofs and
the palm fronds glowing above them; a flag flickered above a consulate,
the palm trees danced in the breeze which carried on its hot breath the
smell of earth and trees and the sounds of the city which seemed less of a
city than a daring watercolor , blindingly beautiful, triumphantly brilliant . 
Around La Belle Arlésienne,  boaters were  paddling; banana-colored
children in little coffin-shaped canoes made from old packing boxes, boxes
of canned meat, anything in the form of a box that can be cut into a canoe
shape. They were chatting with the black sailors, and when they saw

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Hubert they shouted for him to throw coins at them to dive in, but before
he could put his hand in his pocket, Sagesse and the port officers left the
ship. deck-house.      
The newcomers had offered to row Sagesse and Hubert ashore, and
the captain had obviously spoken to them of the fate of the Garonne  , for,
while crossing the port, Hubert found himself an object of interest and
complied with a hundred questions. At the sight of Sagesse, the
little boaters  had dispersed in all directions, and now, while rowing,
Hubert could hear the thin voices of the children singing a song; he heard
the word "Wisdom" repeated over and over, but the patois  and the
breeze dampened everything else except the spirit of the ballad -
Derision. Sagesse was obviously not a favorite of the boaters  of Saint-
Pierre, yet, watching him seated by the port doctor, a cigar in his mouth
and his thumbs glued to his belt, one might have thought oneself a man to
whom children would run by instinct.           
He was in a good mood this morning; and was 87 Hubert; so, too,
seemed the port officers. The joyous town seemed to radiate with
gaiety; the languor of noon had not yet fallen on it and she was laughing
like a child awakened by a kiss on a beautiful morning.     
The harbor side was crowded; naked children, half-naked men, black
men, banana-colored men, apricot-colored men, chatting in this worn-out
French which is the language of the French Antilles, the language in
which Monsieur  becomes Missie  , Maman  , Manmam  ,
and France  , Fouance  .             
In the midst of the `` longshoremen, the idlers, the canoeists  , the
fishermen and the boatmen, wandered the forms of a few women, shining
like tropical birds, graceful in striped scarves and skirts of exquisite colors,
their yellow turbans. wasp striking the eye with force, the brightest points
of an image overloaded with color and blinding light.  
Sinbad has never landed in a harbor stranger than this, so vividly real,
so far from the mundane, so filled with the presence of the past.
Romance was sitting on the very steps of the sea, and as he
disembarked Hubert, he felt what any man who had ever disembarked at
Saint-Pierre must have felt keenly or vaguely: his touch.
Wisdom, wishing good morning to the officers of the port, struck the
town with Hubert. Uptown , by flights of old steps, worn, mossy, shaded
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by the black shadows of the houses and covered with a ribbon of blinding
azure sky, everywhere the sound of running water from a thousand pipes
and fountains, everywhere the sound of the sea echoing as in the whorl of
a great shell. 
The stairs led to the streets, lines of light and flamboyant
colors, verandas , broken by the black shadows of the houses, filled with
colored people of all shades, of all hues, from muletress to chabine ; all
busy, in motion, adrift, 88 chatter, buy or sell, finely formed, graceful as
palm kernels.  
Then others haunted by the sounds of the fountain and the sea, and
they entered a river of light, the rue Victor Hugo.
Hubert, arriving in the street, looked behind the steep and
twilight vico they had climbed, and saw the port, a liquid shadow on
which, seemingly suspended in the air, floated La Belle  Arlésienne  .  
It was like an image closing the first chapter of his life; the sea, and
the island, and the gulls still crying, Jaques dead, the porter, Marseille,
everything was there. Here is a new land and the beginning of a new
existence. The sea, the island, the man he had killed, far beyond. It all
seemed far away, forever over; yet he was close to him, powerfully alive in
the form of Captain Wisdom, and able to reach out and touch his shoulder
if he wanted.     

89
CHAPTER XVI
VICTOR HUGO STREET
White umbrellas, striped verandas, black shadows, laughter,
movement, colors, colored people, colored clothes, lemon-tinted houses,
a flowery blue sky, a street of light under a roof of azure, the rue Victor
Hugo was in front of Hubert.
Looking straight ahead one of them, the scene recalled Naples,
Marseilles, Alexandria, with an added touch as if a gleam, a perfume, a
voice had flown to some colorful city disappeared from a distant past; as if
Pompeii had sent an idle, Carthage a merchant, Tunis a colored child, to
lose himself in the crowd and lend it, barely seen, a heart-rending
subtlety. 
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* * * * *    

There is no sound of feet; everyone is without shoes; they walk in low

voices under the wonderful blue light of the sky, these people, these men
and women of all shades of yellow, graceful, worthy, graceful, who could
seem the inhabitants of a dream city without the sounds of the everyday
life, cries of cigar and pastry and fruit vendors, children's voices,
laughter; the music of a mirliton now comes from afar; he plays in a street
below - Pouf! in a steep side street comes the sound, louder, and carried
on a breath of warm wind from the sea, and below there the blue face of
the harbor laughs at you so high above. You pass; the shops surround
you 90 again, and the crowd and the voices; you reach a small square, a
colored cube; in its center like a diamond flower always in motion, the jet
of a fountain plays in the sun, plays and sings like the spirit of a happy
child; and here where the human voices are less loud, you hear the sound
of the other fountains, the sound of the streams, of the corridors that run
along the side alleys, of the pipes that empty into moss canals, all drawing
their water from the Mount Pelée, paternally, and sitting high above the
great torrential woods, enthroned in the sky and covered with
clouds.           
You continue; the endless street curves, plunges and climbs again,
never quite level; houses and blue shards of the sea alternating to the
right, to the left, above you, houses which break with their sunny yellow
the green foliage of the high woods. The torrent of yellow houses above
seems to tumble down towards the sea, or, if you prefer, the houses seem
to climb up to attack the woods. You can hear from above the sounds of
the wood, the piping of the  mountain  whistler  , the wash of the moving
foliage, just as you can hear from below the sounds of the sea, the songs
of the fishermen and the washing of the sea. water on the beach.      
As a curious and beautiful poem leads you to read, so the colorful and
sunny street leads you to follow it; it brings you over a bridge over the
Roxelane river, where the washerwomen work from dawn until night, and
the rocks are snow-covered with linen, and so to the market, where the
strangest things of the sea and the sea are sold. Earth. 
Beyond are the hills, green to the edge of the water; the sea, the
sky; great blue waste of sun and silence.  
* * * * *    

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At a florist on entering rue Victor Hugo, Sagesse had bought a showy

flower which he put in his coat.
91  He was celebrating  and his good humor was contagious; linking
his arm to Hubert's, he had led him to a cafe, a cool and spacious shop
with tables covered with marble. On each table was a small bowl filled
with brightly colored flowers; men were seated, men dressed in cold
white clothes and wide Panama hats. As Hubert followed his companion
between the tables, he noticed that all these men greeted Sagesse as if he
were an old acquaintance, but without enthusiasm and with a certain
constraint.      
Then, choosing a table in the corner, they sat down, and Wisdom
motioned to the bartender. He came running. 
He had stacked a few glasses on a tray and only saw the newcomers
just before Wisdom waved him; instantly, and almost upsetting the tray in
his haste, he came, and now he rose, a middle -aged, soft-eyed, subdued -
looking quadroon , standing before Wisdom as a slave might stand before
his master. 
“ Hello  , Jules.”
“ Hello  , missie .”
"How has the business been since I left?"
"Good, miss - Jules has been busy, very busy, for almost a month -
before that, not so well." He spoke in Creole patois  , soft, fluent, a
language which seems made for the lips of children.    
Wisdom ordered drinks. When they were on the table, he lit a cigar,
handed another to Hubert, then, crossing his legs and suddenly changing
his behavior: 
“Let's talk business,” he said.
"Business?"
“ My  faith  , yes; that's what they call it: business. See here. I want the
real story of the gold in this belt. I want to know more about this island
and I want to know more about this treasure ship.      
92  When you meet a tropical centipede, what amazes you the most
is how it changes shape, now completely fading into some shadowy
atmosphere, now stretched, swollen, vicious and ready to go. attack you,
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now shrunken, close together, a nothing that, the next instant of contact,
becomes distended and viciously alive.
Captain Wisdom's mind seemed to possess this centipede attribute.
Hubert had imagined the island affair ended; he had imagined that
with the conclusion of the gold coin deal, Sagesse had put the deal behind
him. He hadn't said anything about a treasure ship. The coral ship in the
lagoon had always been in his mind as a vessel that could hold treasure,
but he hadn't said anything about it. How, then, had Wisdom read his
thoughts, and why hadn't he spoken of them before?    
He stared at the Captain for a moment without speaking. "But it's all
over," he said at last. “I told you my story; you had your part in the thing -
You don't believe me? And see here, what do you mean about a treasure
ship? I never said a word about such a thing.     
"My friend," said Sagesse, "between the captain and the mate's cabin
on my boat there is only one plank, and when the man sleeping in the
mate's cabin cries out in his sleep" Hi, Jaques, look, I see through his trap
door; it is full of gold; we will seek it - share and share in the same way,
”the captain begins to think. He said to himself: “This man is talking about
a boat full of gold in his sleep; he came aboard my boat from an island
there; he had in his possession a certain number of old coins,
old Spanish coins ; he confesses in glass that he killed Monsieur 93 Jaques,
the gentleman to whom in his dreams he speaks of a boat full of
treasures; well, can't you see?        
"What?"
“The conclusion - come on, confess, you have a secret; give me the
full story of this matter, or by my soul and on my honor, I'll call the
authorities right here and tell them a lot of things that I know. 
Wisdom, as he said the last words, changed completely, and in an
instant, the good bourgeois was  gone, his upper lip slightly raised, baring
his teeth. Just then he showed himself what he was, not a romance villain,
but a much more terrible individual, the little merchant, heartless, careful,
calculating. The squid of society who, living on crabs and crustaceans, will,
when the opportunity presents itself, seize and devour a man.    
What numbed Hubert's mind was not fear of the authorities, but fear
of Wisdom and astonishment at his methods.

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He felt he was in the grip of a gelatinous thing, this dark spirit had
seized him on board the Belle Arlésienne  and had seemed to let him go; its
tentacles had fallen from his arms, and now they were around his feet. It
was useless to fight with Wisdom; he was at the mercy of man; betrayed
by drink, he had placed himself within reach of the cuttlefish.      
“Look here,” he said finally, “before I tell you anything, tell me this:
why didn't you throw this at me before? Why did you exchange these
coins with me? Why did you pretend to be my friend?  
"Why did I trade with you, my faith  ? I traded with you because I
wanted these parts at a fair price; I brought you here because I wanted to
share with you for 94 your secret at a fair price with the law in my elbow. I
didn't want to make the deal on my own ship; it gives a ship a bad
reputation when men are taken away in chains by the police. I didn't want
the police on board La Belle  Arlésienne  . And as for pretending to be your
friend, my  gosh  , I am your friend, and you will have your share of the
profits of your secret. But the truth that I must have, come ...              
“ God!  Cried Hubert with a burst of irritation. “I wasn't hiding
anything from you. There was  a wreck on the island; I didn't  think there
was any treasure on it, but I had put my mind to it. I talked about it in my
sleep, didn't I? Well, it had to be there in my mind. You will have the
story.              
Then, his elbows on the table, he told how Jaques had discovered the
ship in the lagoon; he described it. Wisdom, also elbows on the table,
listening attentively, asking a question from time to time.  
'That's all,' Hubert finished, 'she may be up to the hatches with gold
for everything I know - and for that matter - for everything I love.
Wisdom sat down, now that the story had been told, reflecting in her
chair and tugging at her heavy mustache.
"And you were on this island," he said finally, "you saw that wreck,
you found gold and dead man's bones, you thought there might be more
stuff. over there, however, if I had not had the story of you would not
have told anyone; you might have gone back to the hold. Pah ! I believe
you, because it's the kind of thing that fills the stables with fools that are
only good at stirring up - well, you'll be lucky in spite of yourself. I take
note of the speculation.    
"You have the intention…"
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95  "I intend to dynamite it and see what's in it." When La Belle

Arlésienne  has unloaded its cargo, I will put it on ballast, I will take a diving
apparatus and all that is necessary, and I will return to this island; you will
go with me.    
"I?"
"Yes you; do you think I want all of Saint-Pierre to be in the
business? I'll only take my colored crew; several of them are good divers,
but I must have another white for a job. like this. You will have your share
of the profits, fifteen percent. It could be a lot, or maybe nothing, but you
will have to work for it, because it will be a horse job to take things away
from her if she lies like this. you tell me. I suppose she has slept in this
lagoon for a hundred years; if she is Spanish, there can be a lot of things…
"Then, after a moment's pause ," There are things on this island ; I can feel
it.        
He daydreamed for a moment, then, as if talking to himself, “the guy
those bones belonged to had something to do with her; he was part of his
crew, or he was there in search of treasures. He may have died of
starvation or accident, or he may have discovered the substance and be
killed by his companions; if they had, they wouldn't have left that belt and
that money behind.   
Hubert looked at Sagesse; the spirit of man seemed to prowl the
business like a dog; he actually seemed to feel money in the thing. Maybe
he did. There are men who, in a strange way, have the power to smell
fortune; their speculations seldom fail; they know what is going to rise in
value, whether in land or in stocks, and they will throw out the most
probable adventure simply because their genius has discovered a hidden
and fatal flaw in it that other men do not perceive.      
96  While Hubert sat watching Wisdom, a glimmer of excitement
began to warm his chest. What man is there to whom the thought of the
hidden treasure does not appeal? The idea of returning to the island
would have been detestable to him half an hour in advance, but already
his heart was racing.  
He wouldn't be alone.
Already he had guessed the main points of the character of Wisdom -
or he had believed to have done it -. He felt it in cold blood, heartless,
calculating, but he imagined that if Wisdom offered him fifteen francs out
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of a hundred which he earned, he would keep his word. With such a small

percentage in sight, it would be easier to keep your word than to break it
and create problems. Wisdom came out of his reverie.   
“Well,” he said, relighting his cigar which had died out, “there is an
end to the matter. I take the thing up; I put my money there; I'll give you
your fifteen percent. I may be putting you on the path to a small
fortune. I'm making you, in fact, a little partner in what can be a big
concern. Half an hour ago you were a Moco, and your end was the bar and
the stokehold ; you had stuff in your head that was precious to me and I
had to blast it out of your head with threats from the law, just like I'm
gonna blow that bitch's stuff with dynamite. Well, what do you think of
Pierre Sagesse? Is this a man who knows his way? Is it worth to be
followed? I'm frank as the day I chose to be frank, and I'm telling you now,
you can accept the offer or leave it; come with me, well and well; refuse it,
and I will have another man. Only remember that              
"What you are proposing is perhaps fair enough", declared
Hubert , 97 "But that, I will say it, right away, you treated me like a friend
this morning; you took my arm, you brought me here, you forbade drinks,
then you threatened me with this matter. I don't like it, and be you who
you can, I say.   
Wisdom took a puff on his cigar and then patiently, as if to explain
things to a child:
“You, this morning, you went like a man with a jewel in his empty
skull; I operated like a surgeon and removed it; that was rude, but there is
the gem, and instead of charging you a fee i'm giving you a percentage off
the value. If I hadn't threatened, you wouldn't have said it. Well? What are
you saying?"     
"I'm not saying I won't come - on one condition - that you never name
this case again or threaten me ."
Wisdom laughs. "Threatening you, why should I?" I used the
instrument, I threw it away. I have everything I want from you, and now
it's your turn to enjoy it a bit. You will be very helpful and I don't want a
stranger in the business. "    
- Look here, said Hubert, the real Provençal that he was, fifteen
percent. - make twenty.

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"Not a cent more than fifteen, not a cent, not a dime." I never go back
on an offer like this. 
"When do you start?"
“It will take me a week to clear the cargo and prepare; meanwhile,
you have your pocket full of dollars and you can have fun. 
"I will come."
"Your word on it."
"I give you my word."
You might have guessed that in the character of Hubert, a fairly
primitive character, childish in some 98 and influenced by elementary
passions, there was a trail of rectitude. For this man, who would not have
known the meaning of "ethics", the simple act of treating came as a
natural gift. Wisdom had guessed this fact and appreciated it, for,
generally speaking, there is no man in the world who values honor in
another more than your thug.   
“Come on,” the captain said, rising from his seat. “I have business to
do, and so do you. The office of the Transatlantic Company  closed
here; will you report; the port authorities will also have you in front of
them; you'll probably find their man at the shipping office, 'cause I said
you'd be there, and, see here, you'll want a white drill suit or two; these
clothes that you have are too heavy for Martinique. Next, you'll want a
bedroom; there are sailors' pensions near the port, avoid them.           
He took a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote a name and
address on a sheet of paper, tore it up and handed it to his companion.
"Go over there. Manman Faly , rue du Morne, n ° 3. She will
accommodate you and find you a place. It is next to the Grande Rue. You
will find it easily; come on."     
He turned to leave.
"We did not pay for the drinks," said Hubert, putting his hand in his
pocket.
Wisdom laughs. “I never pay here; the place is mine; Jules manages it
for me; he is part of my people.    

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Hubert would soon learn how many unfortunate people in Saint-

Pierre fell under this designation, "One of my people".
They fainted in the blinding street, under the flowery blue sky. Only
about twenty meters below was the store where clothes could be
bought. Here Hubert for 99 twenty-two francs bought two white forest
suits, a pair of white canvas shoes and an imitation panama. He put on
one of the suits and, ordering that the other be sent to the address in the
rue du Morne, left feeling a new man.    
In all of her past, a land landing had meant landing in filthy clothes,
smoking and drinking in filthy bars, the wharf fetor . Never before had he
found himself walking through a clean, bright city, in clean, new clothes. It
was delicious, new, absolutely new, and filled with the freshness of
surprise.  
A pretty capresse glanced at him, and it was the last touch to his
vanity; he entered the office of the Transatlantic  Company  , where
Sagesse left him, walking with a confident step, made his statement in
front of the manager and one of the port authorities present, signed it,
then, of course of him and without taking into account the advice de
Sagesse, demanded compensation for his lost kit and his up-to-date
salary.   
For once, wise Wisdom had given the wrong advice, because the
manager, on his own responsibility, and in part, perhaps, in tribute to the
cleanest and most self-respecting captain with whom he was ever fell,
placed an order for the money requested, cashed it, and Hubert left the
office richer by a hundred francs.
The tide of luck was in full flood that morning, and he did nothing to
spoil it; as he passed with the moving crowd, cafes asked him to come in
and celebrate the occasion, but he passed them; he didn't need the help
of alcohol; the bright light, the colors, the movement around him and the
light but languid atmosphere of the cheerful city ablaze all his southern
nature; as blue eyes are made more blue by blue clothing, 100 and South
opal in his mind took more vivid colors bright colors around it.     
The insect had found a leaf similar to the leaf on which it was born.
Unaware of the fact that he was walking straight on his destiny, he
passed in search of the stores, strange shops without windows or names,
black shadows under arched doors, shadows that showed goods and
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colored people, shadows casting scents of flowers and fruits, scents of

garlic.
He was crossing the little square where the jet of the diamond
fountain was dancing and singing in the sun, when he saw the silhouette
of a girl in front of him. She arrived in broad daylight, a girl barely sixteen,
tall, swift, and graceful like Atalanta , a porter  , carrying on her head a tray
of goods covered with a wasp-colored scarf.   
The charge would have imposed a man, but it carried it as easily as a
feather; she was not wearing shoes and her striped dress was caught at
the waist to give free rein to her limbs, showing her leg almost to the
knee. 
She was of that strange race, whose blood was mixed with the blood
of the Caribbean, colored like that Greek statuary to which for a thousand
years the sun has lent a trace of its gold, until one can imagine the light of
the sun lingering in honey. marble tints .
The black blue of her hair had just appeared, covered with the striped
fabric turban on which the tray rested.
As she arrived, walking upright and without moving her head, her
dark eyes looked from side to side, and when she reached Hubert, her
eyes met his, and they neither lowered nor lowered. turned away until she
passed him.
He felt blinded as by a flame. He turned. Elle 101 disappeared in the
middle of the crowd in the rue Victor Hugo. He took a step as if to follow
her, then he stopped dead as if in front of a barrier.    
The gaze had lasted only a moment, but by then, in a flash, they had
spoken to each other. It was as if they recognized each other. 
He could read something mysterious in her eyes, and it was as if she
had said, “Ah, there you are, far beyond the beginning of time!
The fountain was playing in the sun and a hundred men and
women met and passed each other in the little Square, but it was the
meeting and the passage of colored ghosts.
A man and a woman had just met and crossed paths.
A miracle of life had taken place, the old and strange miracle always
fresh, always new. Still, nothing was said about it, until, as he gazed at the
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moving crowd into which she had passed out, suddenly, as if a steeple in
the sky had come to life, the crash and crash occurred. ripple bells. 
It was the cathedral carillon  which rang three times a day. Golden,
happy, sonorous; tenor and alto; beating silver echoes, awakening ghostly
voices in the hills and tall woods, floating above the blue sea.     

102
CHAPTER XVII
BELLS AND RAIN
It rains very often in the west of Martinique. The day is joyous,
brilliant, garish with the yellow of the city and the blue of the sky and the
sea. Pelée, with his cloud turban, sits quietly in the eternal summer, then,
as at the tip of the sea. wand of a wizard, it's raining. Clouds cover the
blue, thunder from the rain on the roof and the veranda mingles with the
rush of the stream and stream.   
It was as if the bells had called the clouds. Suddenly people were
rushing, the rain was beating down. Hubert, who had sought the shelter of
a door, heard the thunder of the verandas all along the rue Victor Hugo,
an arpeggio played by the fingers of the rain. The wind had risen, and from
above came the voice of the great trees beating together their damp
green bands, the sigh of the palm kernel leaning in the wind, the murmur
of tree ferns; from the street below the rue Victor Hugo came the weaker
air from the rainy veranda and the corridor, laughter, voices calling out to
each other through the rain which was dividing, the voices of children and,
again, to through it all, the bells.    
Rain, wind, sounds of trees, scents of new wet foliage and
earth, gouyave water gushing , children's voices, and through all
the chime  of bells, soft, joyful vibrating, like the voice of the love that lives
through darkness as through the sun.  
103  And now look! A burst of blue above; the bells have broken a
path to the sky, a last thunder from the verandas, like a salvo of
separation, and the gust makes a rainbow over the blue sea.  
It's finish. Verandas and store doors empty, pretty faces are turned to
the sky as if to test the truth of its bluish color, and white umbrellas open
against the sun. 
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Hubert, leaving his shelter, went in search of the rue du Morne.

His mind was still filled with the image of the girl, of the girl with the
face of a beautiful child and the eyes of a woman, but the affairs he was in
soon drove her from his mind.
“Monsieur, can you direct me to the Rue du Morne ?”
Sir, an old Creole gentleman under a white umbrella, can and does,
but his instructions are given in Creole dialect  , and so quickly that what
he says seems like a word. Hubert, seeing that the rue du Morne is
somewhere below, finds a small street that goes down towards the blue
dream of the port.    
You could almost fall into the harbor from here, at least in
imagination. There has never been such a steep street, it is mostly steps,
worn by the feet, pushed by moss, murmuring of water, because the side
corridors are in flood after the rain. 
"Madame, can you direct me to rue du Morne?"
In the street below of an old Creole lady under a white umbrella, the
female replica of the old gentleman in the street above, answers
the volubly question , and also apparently in a nutshell.
He understands that she is somewhere upstairs, but too lazy to climb,
he continues on his way along the street which is a replica of the rue
Victor Hugo. Now it comes to the sleepy hour of the day. The streets are
emptying. 104 He inquires about his way as he goes and everyone is
happy to lead him. Sometimes it seems that rue du Morne is above,
sometimes below; he comes to the conclusion that all these lovely people
have no idea what they are talking about. In another town he would be
irritable now, in Saint-Pierre he was only drowsy, hypnotized by desperate
research; it doesn't seem to matter at all, he would sleep just as quickly
under this colorful sky when it is filled with stars, like in a room in rue du
Morne, n ° 3.       
A banana-colored baby eating a banana at a door catches his eye, he
loves children, and this thing, naked like a honey-colored cupid, attracts
him.
He takes off his hat derisively.
“Monsieur, can you direct me to the Rue du Morne ?”

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He can, apparently, in a hoarse voice like that of a crow and with a

thumb pointed to the sky, then he disappears into the house suspecting,
perhaps, that he has been trapped talking to a Zombie  .  
Zombies  are evil spirits, shapes, wizards. Now, in a small street, steep
as a staircase, dark with shadows of a house, framing a glimpse of the blue
sea, he asks for the last time the question of an old woman with a patient
and benevolent face, who has come to her door for a breath of air.  
“Yes, it's rue du Morne, and number 3, that's it.
She is Manman Faly .
They love each other on sight, and he explains what he wants, shows
her a handful of money and follows her into the house.
She takes him into a clean room, but almost devoid of furniture.
In one corner is an "elephant", not an animal, but a mattress two feet
thick.
This is what he aspires to. St. Peter 105 finally took the languid spirit
drowsy duct arm for half an hour, he now leads the mattress and told him
to lie down. He does and falls asleep almost
immediately, while Man'm Faly closes the door and lets him take his own
nap.   
Towards evening, he wakes up, takes food, a drink in the bars of the
star-studded port, returns sober and early to his room.
There is no glass in his bedroom window - not glass in the whole city,
except perhaps the colored glass panes of the cathedral - and since he is
fully awake before sleep, he can hear through the windows. slats of
shutters, the voice of Saint-Pierre at night; the melody of a thousand
streams, fountains, water pipes. 
The entire city is held by sleep, but it sings all night long, responding
to the sea below and the woods above.

106

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CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE
In the south, at night, the trees are full of voices. Dare to sit in the
woods of Martinique at night, you would hear in the green twilight that
the moon makes through the leaves, an orchestra louder and more
fantastic than ever fulfills the dream of a summer night. 
Here, during the day, there is silence. We hear the waterfall, the
distant river, the wind in the trees above, sounds which only make the
depths of the silence more apparent. 
At noon, when the light is full, when the heat is greatest and the wind
above is dead, the silence of the woods is terrible.
There is no silence in the whole world like this, unless it is the silence
of a great multitude.
Around you on all sides, life is explosive and blazing; orchids, hibiscus,
bursts of flowers, ceibas , sandboxes, aerial shoots from the wild pine
forest and the riot, strange because of their demonstrative life in this
silence. 
But in the dark, all the changes. Night rushes through the high woods
like a mad musician, mad conductor like him. 
The blue day outside quickly closes like a big fan painted, as are tables
on a range quickly closed, St. Peter slips into a pocket of shade, the hills
and mountains shrivel, only Pelee remains sunny 107 again then he too
disappears in a fold and suddenly reappears; for the fan, flirted again open
to its full extent, shows the same picture, but this time it is illuminated by
starlight or moonlight.  
It is with the first closing of the light that the woodland orchestra
begins; shrill, trembling, like the bleating of a flock of Lilliputian goats, the
voices of the wood-  goat  and his companions fill the shadows, then the
moon strikes the green heart of the forest and it spouts out like a rattle. A
million fantastic things give tongue. One could imagine forms adapted to
the noises of insects of the northern woods, but the wildest imagination
stops before the possibilities of this tropical group, these drummers and
harpists whose burrs and rattles sway and arise under the sea. farandole
of fireflies.     

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At four o'clock, when Pelée sees the coming sun, and dawn comes
over the sea like a lilac breeze, the wood  cabritt  stops bleating
and Dives ! the last harpist tears the final note from his harp string. The
drummers raise their drums, the oboe and the piccolo, the microscopic
saxophone player, the bones and the flute, pocket or shoulder their
instruments and set off - for dreamland perhaps.    
They made music all night long, music that reached even the
dreamers of St. Peter's. Sleeping people in the city realize in their sleep
that something has stopped, the faint sonorous haze of the large wood
above no longer surrounds them and they wake up. 
Hubert woke up when the wood music ceased. On the black floor of
the room, the dawn through the slats of the shutter placed seven blue-
gray bars on the floor. 
He had dreamed of the island and of Wisdom. They broke into the
treasure ship and the strand was 108 strewn with gold bullion. Then he
lost Wisdom and hunted for himself and for Jaques. It was a full day and
the island was sweltering in the sun. He couldn't see anything of the man
he was looking for; then, in the distance at the end of the little coral pier,
he saw a shape that made him forget Jaques and Sagesse, the shape of a
girl.      
As he got closer, he saw that it was the girl. The girl from the little
place where the fountain was playing. Place de la Fontaine as he called it
in his mind, not knowing his real name.  
She was standing with her tray balanced on her head as if she had
just disembarked, now she was laughing as she saw him coming towards
her, laughing like only girls from Montpellier or Avignon can laugh and, as
he came along the coral ridge he laughed too, balancing himself, fearing to
fall. Then the coral ridge became the yard of a boat, the blue water below
receded and the dream was shattered. 
Sweet Dreams. He'd almost forgotten about her last night, chatting
and smoking with foreign sailors at a tavern bar. She must have hit him
hard to make him dream of her like that, because in the dream it seemed
to him that he had known her for a long time, that he was her declared
lover; this girl he had never seen before and might never see again.   
Now a tap came to the door, and her landlady's voice offered her
coffee or syrup. She brought the coffee and placed it on the floor next to
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him and put the shutters aside, so that the window space became a
square disk of faint light, through which, with a breath of wind, came a silk
from the sea below and a breath from the woods above. 
Saint-Pierre was already agitated; he heard the voices of women and
the chatter of children, the cries of the Creole
streets; stranger 109 Voices, smells and sounds crossed the space of the
open window, waking him completely and awakening in him a keen sense
of curiosity that he had never felt in any other port.   
People here seemed different from people elsewhere. Like a child
who, turning over the pages of a dull book, comes across a surprising and
joyfully colored painting, he experienced a pleasure he could neither
analyze nor understand. An educated man would have felt what he felt,
but cursed by convention and knowledge, and the crosswords of language,
he would not have felt it as freshly as this child from the south, who like all
children from the south had an innate love for everything that true poets
sing and true artists paint.  
Having dressed, he left the house. Man'm Faly was nowhere to be
found, and the Rue du Morne was permeated with a curious twilight
which showed at its end an extraordinary vision of the twilight sea,
sprawling over a phantom blue sea and out, in the distance, and beyond.
from the great shadows of the mountains, to a sea of stainless azure. 
He knocked up in the street above, then up a flight of stairs to rue
Victor Hugo. The street was busy. Laundresses  the bales on their way to
the Roxelane River calendeuses  way to work, tradesmen, children in
carrier  balance their loads on the head, leaving long journeys that these
women do every day on the island, all moving in the twilight of very early
dawn with the blue hyacinth morning sky above.       
The big fan image of the starry city, sea and wood had been taken,
and now the magic fan was slowly reopening to show the same image lit
by the sun. Pelée and the sea were already in sight, and as Hubert
walked 110 along the rue Victor Hugo, the day was blooming more and
more above our heads, the half-light of the hyacinths transforming into a
burst of sapphires. . The air, though still overloaded with shadow, now had
a dark light within it, a negative light that turned positive where any shiny
surface showed, shadows began to form, and the little fountain in the
plaza de la Fontaine was returning from a dance. and whispering a ghost
in the form of a dancing diamond flower.   
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He followed the street as it plunged, climbed, and plunged again

towards the Roxelane River. He wondered in which house in all this
strange town, in which street the girl of yesterday was hiding. 
He had taken the rue Victor Hugo and crossed the little Place, perhaps
because that was where he had met her; who knows; he was quite
oblivious to the way she had taken hold of him, and, infecting him with
that dark gaze, had made something move and live in his
blood; unconscious like the man who was infected with malaria yesterday
and whose first slight shiver says nothing about the burning fever to
follow.   
He paused for a moment on the bridge and looked at the dark
phantom river that was raving to the sea; the banks seemed covered with
snow, it was the laundry of the washerwomen, he heard their voices
above the streaming of the river, and the sound of their clothes beating
against the rocks. 
Then he passed and found himself at the market in the Place du Fort.
Long before the light, under the stars, the boats from the fishing
grounds were heading for Saint-Pierre, loaded with the night's catch. From
Calabash, Morne Rouge, Marigot, Vauclin , men and animals loaded with
local products had entered the city before dusk the night before. 
111  The light was now striking through the trees in the market
square, the stalls were laid out and loaded, the boats had been dragged to
shore on rollers, and their flashing cargoes were empty just at the stalls,
big fish were shaking. still and leaping with life, an albacore, almost as big
as a shark, that it took three men to lift, a blue fish, a black fish, a silver
fish, a fish that looked carefully hand painted, fish of all shapes that fish
can take, lay exposed on stalls or were empty of boats.
When Hubert entered the market, the place was in the
shadows; flowers, fish, fruits were there, merchants to sell them and
people to buy them, but it was like a market in dreamland - a dark image,
but alive and moving, almost speechless -. Pelée holds everything in her
hypnotic sadness.  
* * * * *    

It is morning, but it is not. Then, almost in an instant everything

changes, golden sunbeams stray through the leaves of the trees, the Fort

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Place becomes beautiful with a bright light and a liquid shadow, an

indescribably blue sea is suddenly born, and as if by magic under an
indescribable blue sky. The market place vibrates, fills with voices, it is like
a large cage of birds which break into chatter and song at the first contact
of the sun; you can hear the songs of the boaters  of the sea, the songs of
the fishermen who carry the last boat of fish - haul it through the market,
laughing as they sing and followed by laughing naked children; the voices
of girls, men, buyers, sellers, idlers mingle and mingle with the fresh voice
of the sea. It has a touch of the morning of the world before the smoke of
the first cities dulls the beauty of dawn, before man has learned to cry and
to think. Here amidst 112 tamarins and the first rays of the sun from the
Place du Fort, for a moment you can catch the blue dress of the past, for a
while you can stand on the place of the original Alexandria market for a
while , you can glimpse the Agora of Athens in its youth, touch the
summer that vanished before Rome threw down its bastions and those
legions whose spears reflected the last gleams of the golden age.        
One moment - then Finotte flutters in front of you in her wasp-
colored turban, basket in hand, beautiful as a butterfly in her striped scarf,
and you are back in Saint-Pierre.
* * * * *    

With these people, a man of Hubert's class could fraternize and find
friends on sight. Touched by the spirit of the place, he grabbed the
gunwale of the last boat and helped it hoist it up, the Creole boatman
laughing and chatting with him in the dialect  he only half understood. He
was a Frenchman and a man of the great ships, obviously going on a
frenzy, that was enough for them. When they had set up the boat in a
corner of the fish market, as the place was divided, with fish and meat
sold on one side and fruits, vegetables and flowers on the other, they
began to sell their fish from the boat without worrying about putting it on
a stall.     
Heavens! what fish were in that boat, and what a picture they made
fresh from the sea and still trembling; frill, horned, prickly,
fantastically colored. Black and red parrots  , pink and orange mice  , blue
fish, yellow fish, all sparkling like jewels; gelatinous masses that clung to
the nets, algae. It was as if a large hand had been plunged into the tropical
sea, bringing back whatever it could grab. We were looking for a mermaid
- now the boatmen who pounded with sticks shouted their 113 goods,
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holding their fish, joking with the crowd; Hubert joined him, his white
teeth and his dark eyes shining, the image of one of those boatmen that
one sees on the steps of Naples, only better dressed. He had grabbed a
huge eel and was holding it up, in an instant it was gone, bought, and
Pierre-Alphonse - so he had nicknamed the Head Boatman - nicknamed
him with whatever name came to him first, like these men do. - pocketed
the coins. Pierre-Alphonse had done the barter while Hubert held the eel,
a pretty girl had bought it and carried it in his basket, and now Pierre-
Alphonse grabbing a monster in the shape of a small barrel, a barrel of
wine  - putting it back in between the hands of the new seller. "Sell it too,
man of the sea - Fish!" fish ! fish ! who will buy? - all alive and breathing ,
all fresh from the water, thunder  , flying  , saury  , all jumping on
you. Hi Dodotte - Pauline, where are you going with your baskets - fill
them. He seemed to know everyone; the little children crowded together,
he gave them handfuls of sádines  , small white fish, let them pick up the
seaweed from the boat, patted their heads, all with his left hand, so to
speak, while with his right hand and the all the energy of his mind and
body he kept selling. He was a tall man, Pierre-Alphonse, with a tall, dark,
smiling face, handsome to look at together, and evidently a "character" of
the market, and a favorite.                               
Hubert had sold the barrel of wine  to a union of two old women who
had gathered to buy it, and perhaps hawk it around town with other
products, for they had a small truck of cane with them. , when, turning to
the boat to find something else to sell, he saw the young girl in the midst
of the surrounding crowd. She was without her tray, her little curved head
was tied with a yellow and blue madras, she had a basket in her hand, and
she came to buy 114 fish. Then she saw Hubert. Their eyes met and she
instantly looked away.      
Pierre-Alphonse saw it too.
Not only had she looked away, but she had turned away.
Pierre-Alphonse's mouth opened:
"Hello, Marie - Marie de Morne Rouge - ho, Marie, are you deaf this
morning?" Here is the fish calling you… she's gone… ”Then to Hubert:“
Now what the devil has entered the girl - she often buys me, she came,
and she left - it doesn't matter, here is another barrel - the  sell, O man of
the sea… ”   

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"Who is she?" asked Hubert, taking the barrel  .   

“Marie - whose father lives in Morne Rouge.
"Where does she live?"
“With her aunt in the rue du Précipice. Ho, there, Mayotte, here is a
fish for you as pretty as yourself, take it for nothing, almost nothing, two
cents and it's yours, it's as big as a baby ... 
"What is she, this Marie?"
"A porter  - this is yours - wait till I get the change, and your mother,
how is she?" Slowly I hope - there, take your change, little one - »all in
the patois  which takes on the clarity of the words, makes new words from
the past, a tropical growth of language, colorful, picturesque, infantile.     
Hubert turned to Pierre-Alphonse. "Well, I have to go, good luck ..."
He pulled away with a suspicious hug and, followed by a shower of good
wishes from Pierre-Alphonse and his crew, mingled with the crowd. The
girl was nowhere to be found, there were pretty girls everywhere, but he
didn't have eyes for them.  
Was she angry with him? Why had she turned away? Five minutes
ago, when he was there to help Pierre-Alphonse sell his fish, he had
forgotten her; if he had never seen 115 it again, he would not have much
disturbed; but, now, something inexplicable had happened, the world had
changed in a flash, it was as if to a man walking blindly on a misty road the
vision of a beautiful inaccessible country had suddenly appeared to
through a tear in the haze that closed destroying the vision, but leaving
the dream. He was in love.      
He crossed the Square and wandered among the stalls where fruits,
vegetables and flowers were sold. Here the air had an intoxicating and
intoxicating scent, the place was glorious of colors, heaps and mounds of
color, such a fruit! those vegetables! these flowers! Eggplants, apples from
Haiti, oranges - green oranges, tiny monkey oranges, giant oranges - giant
apricots the size of a turnip, wicker baskets filled with green nutmeg,
creamed apples, guavas, white and green christophines , prickly pears -
then vegetables, palms and sweet potatoes, breadfruit - cabbage. And the
flowers, the flowers of grenadilla and the flowers of love  , flowers
of Loseille Bois, flowers of delicate butterflies, in equilibrium as always in
flight. Hubert had stopped looking for the girl in the kaleidoscopic crowd
around him, he was standing at a stall, half of which was loaded with fruits
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of all colors, the other half with all colored flowers when, turning around,
he found that 'she was next to him.       
She was quite oblivious to this fact. Wandering through the crowd,
she had drifted against him, nudged him with her elbow not knowing who
she was touching until he turned and their eyes met for the third time in
their lives; then, all of a sudden, and as if the faint reflection of a rose had
projected onto her face and neck, she blushed - it was less a blush than a
deepening of the southern twilight under her skin.  
116  It told her as soon as she recognized him, not just that; in a
mysterious way, it told her that she was thinking of him. It gave him
courage.  
“ Hello  , miss.”
“ Hello  , miss.  
It was the greeting that everyone made to everyone in Saint-Pierre, to
strangers, to friends, to everyone. She was passing by when, picking up a
wreath of love flowers from  the stand and tossing a few coins onto the
tray, he handed her the branch laden with delicate flowers. She took it,
looked at him with a half smile, then she looked at the flowers as if she
had never seen flowers before, her lips were moving, she was whispering
something, talking to the flowers, to the branch, "Oh, you you are pretty,
you are sweet. Then she died; with a look and a little salute to the giver of
the flowers she had dissolved in front of him in the colorful moving
crowd.      
But her voice stayed with him, the caressing words she had said to
the flowers in the infantile French of the tropics.
"Oh, you are pretty, you are sweet ..." She had spoken to the flowers,
but it seemed to Hubert that she had spoken of herself. She had described
herself unconsciously in a sentence. 
He is dead. He didn't want to find her then. The vision kept him
satisfied for the moment. She wasn't angry, more than that, she wasn't
indifferent. For this man, direct and fierce in love as in hate, this girl in her
class was a revelation, she looked less like a woman than a flower that had
suddenly blossomed in her path.    
The elements of all the greatest poetry live in the most ordinary
man; deaf to the fabric of Balladier the show, blind to the embroidery art,
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the eternal terrors 117 and the beauties of nature move him much or little
as the case, but they move him. The most ordinary man would have felt
something of poetry, simple and sweet, but exotic and beyond the
fascinating words, that this girl carried with her - thrown around her as
the love flower  casts its color and her perfume.     
"Oh you're pretty - you're sweet…" He was turning to leave the
market place when a shout from one of the vendors made him turn
around.
The stall behind him had been upset, the crowd was dispersing in all
directions.
“ Spearhead  — Spearhead!  ”
The cry echoed from one end of the Square to the other and Hubert
found himself alone, face to face with an old gentleman dressed in white
and holding a white umbrella above his head.
The old man, though apparently paralyzed with terror, had not
dropped his umbrella. His eyes were fixed on the ground where, writhing
in the dust, a yellow snake raised its head to strike it. 
It was an iron  spear  , young, about three feet long, terrible as death
itself. He had come to the market hidden in the large clusters of yellow
bananas, frightened and fierce; hating the sunlight, he was about to strike
the man in front of him, terror striking terror.    
The sight of the reptile left Hubert unperturbed. The smallest
minority of the great human race is certainly the people who are not
afraid of snakes. Hubert was one of those few, a strange fact considering
his imaginative nature. It is true that he did not know anything about the
spearhead  and his terrors, but if he had, I doubt he would have done
otherwise than him.     
The snake, obsessed with his goal has not seen 118 enemy
undaunted behind him; leaping forward in a flash, Hubert seizes her with
his bare hands just under the horrible triangular head; Grabbing it four
inches lower with his left hand, he nearly twisted the head of the body,
breaking the spine at the neck. Then he threw the remains on the ground
and planted his heel on his head, crushing the bones and the demon's
brain, and burning his eyes in dust.    

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The next moment, it seemed to him that the world had gone mad and
was trying to suffocate him. The old man he had saved was clinging to his
neck, the whole market was sweeping around him; the men laugh, the
women cry and cry out to Our Lady. We could have believed Hubert to be
the bearer of the news of a national triumph, the savior of the island, that
is to say if we did not know the Creole spirit and its excitability. Then a ring
formed and he found himself in the center of it, the old man - still with the
umbrella on his head - holding his hand, shaking it and speaking at the
same time.    
"I am Monsieur Séguin, none of these good people here know me…"
mutters of assent from the crowd, "you saved my life at the risk of yours, I
am your friend. Ask what you want, I am not poor, my house is yours and
everything I own. My life is yours, for did you not save it?  
“Nothing, nothing,” cried Hubert, “I did nothing. I'm not afraid of
snakes… ”then with a touch of tartarin in his tone ,“ they never bite me. 
They never bit him! Him who had never handled one before - but the
crowd didn't know, they took it as a statement of fact. This man was
therefore a prodigy, he wielded the dreaded spearhead  like a thief
handles a chicken. Before noon, this fact had become the news of the day
in Saint-Pierre, and Hubert half hero, half sorcerer.      
119  - All the same, said old Mr. Séguin, you saved my life, sir, I thank
you in a place other than this: did you eat breakfast? No? Well, please
come with me and accept my hospitality.  
With his hand on Hubert's arm, he led him through the crowd that
was divided in front of them, across the square, across the Roxelane river,
into the rue Victor Hugo.
Here, in a cafe, they had lunch.
During the meal, the old gentleman, who had a strong and lively
personality, questioned his host about his past, present and
future. Although good-hearted, of course, and obviously a power in Saint-
Pierre, Mr. Séguin was not the most refined. He showed how he-examined
against his vis-à-  vis  , for as soon as he gauged the social position of
Hubert and his manner was that of a permanent deal with an employee
employer but every move and every word, the tone of his voice and the
kindness of his old eyes proclaimed that he was a "righteous man."    

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Hubert told the wreckage and sketched its story until he came in the
name of Wisdom.
"Wisdom!" cried his questioner . “Pierre Sagesse?”
“Yes, that's his name.
One could have imagined that another spearhead  had shown himself,
so much was the hatred and the hatred which manifested themselves on
the face of Mr. Séguin. Then he stifled his emotions and poured himself
more coffee.   
“Beware of this man. This is not a man, it is an iron  spear  . Toxic. Did
he land you here? Well of course you won't have anything more to do
with it.      
Hubert explained that he was required to go on an expedition with
the said spearhead as  soon as La Belle Arlésienne  120 had cleared its
cargo. He said nothing about the treasure or the object of the expedition,
but I doubt that he did, that Mr. Séguin would have heard him.     
"But you won't go."
“But I have to - I gave my word.
“Ah, you gave your word. Well, a given word should not be taken
back even from Pierre Sagesse. But don't meddle with him if you can help
him. Look! " He pointed to a huge spider passing along the wall. " It's
Pierre Sagesse. He's a spider-man, who treats other men like a spider
treats flies. Put them in his power, bind them and sucks them in. He's my
biggest enemy, "the old man said bluntly ," and I'm the only one who ever
got the better of him. He hates me. I think I'm the only man he really
hates; a nature like his doesn't give in to hatred, that would be a waste of
energy. Then suddenly, "Did he bind you?"            
Hubert, surprised by the question and its far-reaching significance,
was on the point of answering. But the old man had read the fact on his
face. 
“Don't worry about saying it - only this - if he did, Paul Séguin will be
your friend. Ah, you don't know Wisdom. He's got many poor people here
under his horrible hand, men he's loaned money to, men he's got power
over, and he's working them like slaves, niggers. Well, now, when you
come back from this expedition, you will stay in Saint-Pierre, you and
me let you get on the path to making money. I own a lot of these boats
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that go fishing. I can make you a pretty comfortable place, and you'll settle
down among us and marry a pretty girl. A good guy like you will have his
pick of the best.      
Hubert laughs. Here's a perspective if the treasure hunt turns out to
be unsuccessful. 
121  “ Faith,  ” he said. “I will take your offer lightly. I've never hit a
place like this, and I never hope to leave it when I return from this trip -
and think I'd be lucky enough to meet you through a snake.    
“My friend,” said Mr. Seguin, “there is a Martinican proverb which
says:“ He who kills a snake is forgiven for seven deadly sins ”. So you
purged yourself of seven sins and made a lifelong friend - don't let us look
down on the snakes. 
For the first time, Hubert felt the sweetness of knowing that he had
saved a life that morning. The dead Jaques appeared before him. Here is a
life to balance this life he had taken. Then in a flash appeared in front of
him Anisette, selling drinks at the Riga bar. Heavens! was it possible that
he had ever loved or thought about this small creature with the tallow
face!     
Marie, Marie du Morne Rouge, had killed the evil shadow of Anisette
in her mind, just as a ray of sunlight kills a shadow.
Then he said goodbye to Monsieur Séguin, promising to call him and
see him at the address the old man had given him on a card.
He turned down the hill towards the waterfront where on
Place Bertine , in the middle of the sugar marshes, speaking to one of the
port officials, he saw Wisdom. The owner of La Belle Arlésienne  laughed,
gesticulated and, as Hubert passed to emphasize a point, he lowered his
big thumb on top of a cask of sugar.   
Hubert could only remember the words of M. Seguin about the
unfortunate under that "horrible thumb."

122

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CHAPTER XIX
MARIE DE MORNE ROUGE
The rue du Précipice literally hung between the sea and the
sky; almost as steep as a ladder, so steep that the causeway here and
there broke into flights of steps, like a river breaks into cascades. You have
seen, looking up, far above you, the green of the high woods, and looking
down, far below you at the harbor, blue at noon and emerald in the
morning. Nothing more beautiful in its own way than this old, narrow and
old-fashioned street during those morning hours when the port, gauze
green and ghostly, gazed as through a shaft of twilight at the woods,
black-green against the lightening. sky .   
As old as Joséphine's time, the rue du Précipice was the twilight of
romance in these early hours. The murmurs of the sea below and the
woods above, the trickle and tinkle of the gouyave water flowing down its
halls sounded like voices speaking of the past, of bygone times, of missing
women, of once brave men - now ghosts. 
In the full blaze of noon, the old street shone with color and moved
with the people; then, as the hour of the siesta approached, she gradually
emptied, the great heat of the afternoon seemed to dry up her flood of
life, the song of the calendar  on her work, the note of a guitar, vocals port
seemed less ringtones that sound echoes, green lizards slipped from
shadow to 123 shadow openly or bathed in the warmth. Then as the sun
was setting, the old street began to speak and live again, the sunset
ascended it like a torchbearer, setting fire to the roof and the gable, the
wall of the yellow house, the colorful women's clothes. , up, up, lighting
up the woods far above. - light up the stars and let them burn and jump in
the dark blue.     
It was children's time. You could hear their voices as they played, told
their stories, sang their songs, as the blue above grew darker, sharper,
more filled with stars. 
It is here, in this old street, that Marie lived with her
aunt, Man'm Charles, in a house on the right as you go up from the port
and near the passage leading to rue Buonaparte.
Born sixteen years ago in the village of Morne Rouge, she had paid for
life the biggest salary life can get from a human being. She had lost her
mother. Her father, who owned the only shop in the village, had been

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quite prosperous to a small extent; in addition to the shop, he owned a

small farm, and three times a week, he came to the Saint-Pierre market to
sell his products, leaving the shop in the care of his sister, Ti Finotte , a
woman of forty, a woman in the old days. tall , majestic, beautiful like any
woman in Martinique, but now crippled, devastated, killed by hard
work. She had been a carrier  .      
The carrier  of Martinique is a breed apart; she's actually a peddler,
selling everything from fruit to ribbons. She carries her tray on her head
and her goods on the tray, and her load would break an Englishman if he
carried it half a dozen miles. She doesn't think about it. Marvelous is not
the word to designate the work of these graceful women, sometimes
slightly built, often beautiful, who, with their perfectly balanced loads,
barefoot 124 dressed in light clothes like the clothes of the ancient
Greeks, will travel fifty miles a day. from village to village, over hill and
dale, under the tropical sun, joyful as children, pleasant, sweet to look at,
but doomed to die last - from overwork!       
Yet they don't complain and look at their lives with
bitterness; however hard the work, it is free from the constraint of walls,
houses and masters; it is lonely to go from village to village in the midst of
the mountains, but they have the company of sun and wind and
distance. So Ti Finotte , although she was dying of the trials of life and that
she loved little Marie, made no opposition when Marie's father declared
his intention to make a carrier  of the child.     
Marie was four when he made this decision, and he came because he
didn't see a better future for her. Since the birth of Marie, he had had bad
days; Desirous of expanding his farm, he had borrowed money, and he
had borrowed it from Wisdom, then a rising power in Saint-Pierre; a bad
harvest and a tornado paralyzed him in this new development of his
business, he had to ask Sagesse for another loan, and it dated his ruin.   
Things always worked evil in Wisdom's favor: if he lent a man money,
surely something would happen to prevent that man from paying the
interest or settling the debt; then, when his business was seized by
the moneylender, things would turn out, trade would revive, the harvests
would be splendid - and the profit would return to Sagesse. 
So it was with Marie's father. The year after his property fell into the
hands of the lender, a wave of prosperity swept over Martinique. He
always 125 lived in Morne Rouge, paid servant of wisdom, watching the
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small farm that was once his, he saw the rods become so heavy and so
high that harvesters could barely make their way among them , the
bananas bending under the weight of their huge yellow clusters, yet he
did not growl; it was fate, and he was making the most of it for himself
and Marie.    
When Mary was fifteen and old enough to start the
company's carrier  , Ti Finotte died, and Mary came to live with her aunt in
the Precipice of the street and serve as supporting  employment of Mr.
Sartine the scarves merchant ribbons, Madras handkerchiefs and women's
clothing, the shop of which was rue Victor Hugo. The death of
Ti Finotte had struck the child in the heart, for she was still only a child
despite her fifteen years and her figure, tall, straight, supple - almost the
face of a woman; the passing of the blazing sun of Morne Rouge to the
dark old street of Precipice had seemed to be part of the sad change that
had taken place in her life with the death of the woman who had been a
second mother to her; her aunt, Man'm Charles, a calender  by trade, was
a stern, religious, devout woman, and without much heart or sympathy for
young people - yet within two weeks the girl had adapted to her new life
and had come to love the old street, its voices, its colors, its darkness and
its mystery.         
He had revealed his secret to her. A secret that could only be told to a
poet or a child. Man'm Charles knew nothing of this secret, the merchants
and hawkers, the brazier that lived in the passage of the rue Buonaparte,
the baker whose shop was opposite the brazier, knew nothing. For them it
was only a street, for Marie it was a mystery half understood. The old
houses, the 126 shadows, mossy and worn steps, the twilight of the
morning, the whisper of water from Gouyave , all spoke to him, telling him
things - things of the past, things on future, allusions to the mystery of life
- as if the people who lived and loved there had left a voice behind them,
an echo of their history.     
Three days a week, early in the morning, when Pelée was showing
herself hard against dawn, she would go to Monsieur Sartine's, receive her
tray of goods and go on a trip, carrying it as if it had no weight. .
To see her life and her work, you have to follow her as, leaving rue
Victor Hugo, going up the steep and twilight streets, she passes, moving as
no woman can move who does not walk barefoot, passing in the silence of
a ghost and the grace of Atalanta , giving hello to everyone she meets,

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friends or strangers, up, up, beyond rue Peysette , rue Petit Versailles,

until the houses begin to disappear and the road passes from one street to
another. country road traced on each side with balisiers, gigantic
ferns, whispering canes ; scented with damp earth and the scent of night
jasmine. 
Up there, if she looked back, she would see the city at her feet still
twilight and half asleep, the blue bay but still filled with night, and beyond
the shadow of the island to the west. , the sea sparkling in the sunlight.
But she doesn't look back and turn her head. His eyes, always
watching the formidable iron  spear  , are fixed on the floor before her.   
Every moment the sky above fills with more and more light, and as
she climbs, it seems to her that she is rising in the sun; now the road,
flatter, turns the great shadow of Pelee, and in front of her the morning
twilight becomes the blue of day. 
127  The road takes a sharp bend, it turns it, and it is enveloped in a
flame of the sun, the hot trade wind which the mountains cut at Saint-
Pierre blows in its face. The  zombies  , snakes, evil spirits, all the fears that
haunt the darkness is banished by the sunlight, carried by the wind.  
Far here, so high above it all, she seems the only person in the
world; there is not a soul in sight; sugar cane fields, valleys, hills, purple
and blue mountains, dazzling azure sea - distances and colors are offered
to her. Silence and sun.   
She always stops here like you stop when you meet a friend. The
greatest poet, the meanest man would face this supreme beauty the
same. 
Looking from the blue sea to the green hills and from the hills to the
blue mountains over which La Trace passes, the great white road, like a
narrow white ribbon, she speaks to him in a low voice. She doesn't know
where the sea leads, she doesn't know anything about the sun, or if the
earth revolves around him or him around the earth, she ignores these
things as a prehistoric woman. Perhaps that is why she understands all
this so well, this large picture to which she speaks in a low voice, caressing
like a child speaks to her mother.  
Then the road brings her back again and she shifts her burden on her
head, walking quickly and easily, straight as a flame, a beautiful image
against the whispering canes lining the road, palm kernels and ferns.
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Her trip can go as far as Grande Anse, she will perhaps sell her goods
in Calabasse , Marigot or in Vauclin ; far or near, it's the same for her. 
At noon, she is still traveling; through these blue hills in the scorching
midday light you will find it passing 128 on its way; she has sold some of
her possessions and there are coins in the little bag on her belt. But she
doesn't think of them. What is she thinking about? Ah, if you had to lead
his life, always active, always in the open air, you would know that
thought can live in suspension. Not the suspension of sleep, but a half-
sleep, wide awake to all external things, but not dwelling on any one in
particular. She would see, as the road went, the hills change as the road
turned, the distant mountains disappeared as the road descended, and
reappeared rising again, distant views of the sea blue eyeing it between
the hills, fields of green cane waving towards the breeze, wood
appearing; and the woods would set aside the sea and the fields of cane
would replace the woods, and the green hills of the fields of sugar cane
and the sea of the hills.         
Within a year, she was known throughout the island. The negroes
cutting the cane stopped to look at Marie du Morne Rouge, the
prettiest porter  in Martinique, and say hello to her; in the villages where
she called with her wares, she made a better trade than any
other porter  ; her beauty had little to do with this success, for her clients
were women, but she had a path with her, an innocence, a sweetness,
which made her as pleasant as a rose.       
Needless to say, in Martinique, where hearts are as flammable as
tinder, she had admirers, scores, hundreds - but she had no lover.
When young men came to talk to him, they found themselves 129 for
loss to the girl who spoke to them face to face, openly, freely, like a friend
could talk to a friend. She didn't seem to know she was a girl; other girls -
all the daughters of Saint-Pierre of her age - had lovers, visions of Love,
visions of Love with garland wings, wedding wreaths, all the thrift stores
that make marriage a spectacle of the woman. Mary had no vision of
these things. Her spirit was of that rare order of the spirit of the woman
who holds all the love of Heaven in solution, but no image of Love until
the man she is destined to meet meets, glances at her, talks to her, and
suddenly makes her sound forever.     
It is women who are the heroines of the real tragedies of life - and of
the immortal tales of Love.
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CHAPTER XX
FELL
One day, M. Sartine sent Marie to call to a house on the main road
that crosses Morne Parnasse. His business was to show lace to a Spanish
lady, Señora Vigil, and sell it if possible. 
La Señora had come to Martinique by chance; she had taken this
house - the Château Principe - by chance, and yesterday she had
accidentally entered M. Sartine's shop to buy lace. She might as well have
gone to Mr. Custine's shop, or to the Fleur d'Avril, or to the Bon Marché,
but luck - whose other name is fate - led her to Mr. Sartine.  
Marie, who had sold all the lace to the Señora, returned to Saint-
Pierre very happy and in a good mood. It was her sixteenth birthday and it
had brought her the most pleasant surprise in the world. 
Finotte , Dodotte , Florine, Honorine, all her friends and
acquaintances had remembered the day; each had brought a small
present, a trifle, less than a trifle, a box of flaming colored seashells, a
scarf, a pearl necklace — the brazier opposite and the baker had
remembered her; they didn't bring any presents, but they shouted his
good wishes as they passed. Her aunt gave her the rarest thing she had
ever given to anyone: a smile. She hadn't known that either of those
people had taken care of her until this morning when her birthday got
them talking. 131 And she hadn't told nobody her birthday, or just one
girl, Finotte - she must have spread the word .     
Then, the sale of lace had been entrusted to her by Mr. Sartine, a very
important business, in which she had succeeded. The Señora had spoken
to him kindly, had asked him his age and, finding that it was his birthday,
had given him a small old-fashioned cross forged in silver and with the
Blessed Savior on it. “He was blessed by the Archbishop of Santa
Cruz,” said the Señora, “and as long as you keep him, nothing bad can hurt
you.”  
It had been a wonderful morning. The sun was full in the sky as she
crossed the road in front of the Jardin des Plantes. The doors were open,
they were still open, rusty and decaying; she could see through the great
twilight arch made by the trees. In there, among the palm trees and large
tropical trees, a bird was singing, screaming, filling the echoes with its
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golden flute-like notes. He was a mountain  whistler  . She stopped and

looked inside. The large garden, once carefully maintained, had fallen into
disrepair, the lianas hung like ropes between the trees; palm kernel and
tree fern, cedar and cricket, all were corded and tangled by lianas, the
scent of vanilla emanated from green gloom, vanilla and green orange,
damp mold, the sad smell of decaying leaves.         
It was a wonderful and mysterious place, the Jardin des
Plantes; arranged when Versailles was filled with courtiers, beautiful when
Joséphine, not yet Empress, walked its paths, nothing dreaming of
Napoleon or his fate; long gone and now delivered to Nature, which was
slowly taking it back to itself.  
Marie, when she passed the doors, was still looking fascinated and
half frightened by the silent riot of trees and shrubs; but today it seemed
less gloomy; the bird's voice seemed to fill him with light.  
132  “Mary! Married! Married! Hello  , Marie - Marie de Morne
Rouge, ”sang the bird. She made a beautiful picture as she stood on the
road illuminated by the sun, listening with half - smile with
notes of golden liquid mountain whistler  .            
"Married! Married! Married! Hello  , Marie — Marie de Morne Rouge.
” 
Then she sighed, turned and walked on her way. It was as if the old
garden where the lovers had once walked had said something to him, just
as the old rue du Précipice had told him something. But what the garden
was telling him was much less understandable; something new, strange
and sad had spoken in the bird's voice, in the silence of the green half-
light. It was as if she had seen the vision of a beautiful country,
inaccessible, a moment glimpsed, then gone forever.    
But it went through the Place du Fort and the bridge spanning the
Roxelane river.
The washerwomen downstairs were busy; she could hear their voices
and their laughter; the rue Victor Hugo was full of people; she knew many
of them, carrier  sisters , traders, idlers, and greeted them as she
passed.     
The crowd was thinner as they approached the little Place de la
Fontaine, and they could see the water in the fountain like a diamond
flower in the sun. As she crossed the Square, she saw a figure in white
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clothes coming towards her. His eye, keen and trained in observation,

immediately noticed that it was a question of a stranger in Saint-Pierre, a
man of foreign ships, not Creole.  
As she walked past him, she looked him straight in the face, frankly,
as she looked everyone in the face, male or female; her eyes met her full,
illuminated eyes and… she was dead. 
133  The crowd was around her, but she couldn't see him. Someone
had spoken to him without words; she had spoken to someone. The world
seemed empty for a moment, containing only itself and this
mysterious. She barely remembered his face except that it was dark and
vaguely beautiful; but the eyes held his soul. He had spoken to her like a
man speaks to a woman with a look; it was nothing compared to the fact
that she had spoken to him. It was as if something stupid in her that she
had never known existed had woken up from sleep, escaped the darkness,
spoke in a strange language, then fell back into darkness, leaving her
perplexed and surprised.        
For a moment, as she continued on her way, the vision of the Jardin
des Plantes rose before her, and the voice of the mountain
whistler  followed her: “Mary! Married! Married! Marie de Morne
Rouge. " The old garden haunted by love and the bird appeared to try to
say something - something impossible to understand something beyond
all sad sadness, and beyond all fair beauty.      
Then, drowning everything, as if a steeple in the sky had opened,
came the sound of the bells; it was the cathedral carillon  which rings twice
a day, silver bells and gold bells, tenor and alto, answered by a thousand
singing echoes coming from the high woods and the port, from the street
and the place , floating on the blue sky, floating on the blue sea.   
"Marie, Marie de Morne Rouge - Hello  , Marie - Little carrier  , child of
the sun, listen to us, the bells, listen to us, the echoes - we speak the
language he spoke, birds and echoes, bells and flowers, soul of woman
and soul of man, only one language has them.    
“Marie de Morne Rouge — Marie.”

134

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CHAPTER XXI
THE FLOWER OF LOVE
Then, as if called out by the bells, the clouds around Pelée spread out
like a fan, the sky darkened, and Marie, taking shelter under a veranda,
heard the rain pouring from street to street.
The darkness and the rain were like an omen - or could have been
without the bells, ringing, joyous, triumphant, like the love that lives
through disaster and beyond death.
She heard the thunder of the rain on the roof and the veranda, the
sky seemed to never clear again, then, as if the bells had broken a path to
the sky, a blue rift showed through the clouds , widens, widens always
with a burst of sun and the clouds receded on the sea, sweeping it with
meadows of tourmaline shadow.
Marie, coming out of the shelter of the veranda, turned towards M.
Sartine's shop, recounted his relations with the Señora, received praise
from the old merchant, who was a man of heart in all that. money was not
concerned and left for the house.
On leaving the shop and entering rue Victor Hugo, the world seemed
banal again, the bells had stopped ringing, the joyous morning had died
out as if the voices of the bells had taken it to sea with them.
135  She went back to the street of the precipice. Man'm Charles was
in a bad mood; Finotte , one of the girls she employed in her business, had
not come that morning and was shorthanded. The bad humor which
should have fallen on Finotte fell on Marie.   
It is always so in this world, the day that begins cloudless, warm and
perfect, seldom lasts until sunset.
The girl, who was never idle for a moment, took Finotte's place , one
would have thought that by working as she did as a porter,  a public
holiday had sometimes fallen on her on a day like this one, but she did
not. not growled.  
She began to paint the large Madras handkerchief without a whisper.
Three other girls were working with her in the bedroom, a dark room
in which the blazing sun from the street outside barely penetrated
through the green slats of the shutters. Pauline, Celestine and Florine

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were their names, and they chatted while working in the sweet childish
French of the tropics. It was like the chatter of birds in a dimly lit
cage. Celestine was to be married next month, Pauline and Florine had
lovers, Love, marriage, other lovers of girls, affairs of the heart, Rosine
abandoned by the fisherman Ambrose, who had gone to live in Fort de
France, Lys who had thrown Achilles, who had threatened to drown - so
the conversation continued. Birds that one could imagine talking like that
to each other in the branches of perdille  wood  and tamarins. Marie took
no part in the conversation, she never did when the conversation took
place like this. Today, while she was working, she seemed even more
abstract than usual. But she was listening - half listening, wondering why
Lys had thrown Achilles, why the fisherman Ambrose had thrown Rosine,
interested in these people's troubles, though she didn't know
why. Yesterday 136 their quarrels would have been of no interest to
her.            
Then while she was working, she saw things. The road on the Morne
de Parnasse, the green half-light of the Jardin des Plantes, the sunny Place
du Fort, the rue Victor Hugo and the Place de la Fontaine with the
diamond flower of the fountain sparkling in the sun. 
Wherever her thoughts could lead her, they always returned to the
Place de la Fontaine. Then she would see a white figure coming towards
her. Her thoughts were trying to escape, to turn around - impossible, you
had to go on, come face to face with that someone, find that look, answer
it - only then could she pass to get lost in the crowd. , meet the music of
the bells, the chime  of joy; voices from the woods, echoes from the
harbor side, music from the sky, echoes from the earth, hugging it,
bending it into sound waves ...      
Just as the waves of a tropical sea crashing on the shores of an islet
can tell a man the fact of man's isolation and loneliness - loneliness
that love alone can banish - so too sound waves, shining, dark, sound
or echoing, had told Marie about the isolation and solitude of women.
All his life suddenly appeared to him like a great loneliness. It was as
if she was standing on the shore of an islet and suddenly discovered the
fact for the first time that she was completely alone, the discovery
brought to her by the glimpse of a distant ship, a glimpse who had
disappeared, leaving her in her solitude. 

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This is how true love comes first, analyze it in its depths, this huge
wave that hits all human beings at some point in their life, the crest can be
sunny, joyful, - but the heart comes from the great ocean where solitude
is 137 Supreme. Raised on the Merry Ridge, a man sees the object of his
desire, the companion of his soul; if he does not seize it, he will sink into
the heart of the wave, the sadness of his solitude, to be finally carried to
the shore without ever seeing the true sun again.   
After nightfall, when the stars had gone out and the voices of the
children playing in the streets had ceased, Marie went to her room, a
room so poorly furnished that you could almost say she didn't. was not
furnished at all. Just a mattress on the floor, a chair, a cedar wood box
where she kept her clothes and her few possessions, and on the wall a
little shrine of the Virgin, a very small thing, painted in a gaudy way, and
with a small hollow to hold flowers. 
She had been brought up in the Catholic faith, she placed flowers
in the small trough of the sanctuary and prayed to the Virgin, but I doubt
that her faith is more than a fetish worship of the image of the Virgin, or if
her religion has given comfort in bad times.
Ti Finotte had died and had gone into darkness, the smiling Virgin in
the small sanctuary could not stop this nor say a word of comfort. Deep in
her heart, she felt that religion was an entirely one-sided affair in which
man did everything from good works to worship and nothing to
divinity. But then she was only Mary, a being from far away. His people
had given their name to the Caribbean Sea, had hunted wild horses before
the birth of our Savior, were lost to sight behind centuries of sun, silence
and savagery. How could she see the light clearly, with the dawn of the
world still in her eyes?    
She lay down and went to the dreamless sleep that accompanies the
hard worker whose job is outdoors. The next morning she was standing
before the stars pale, for her 138 aunt had given him several tasks before
breakfast time.  
Among other things, she had to go to the market to buy provisions,
and it is there, you will remember, that she had her second meeting with
Hubert and her gift of the love flower.

139
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CHAPTER XXII
THE ROUTE DE GRANDE ANSE
The next morning, very early, Marie went to rue Victor Hugo,
received her tray of goods and began her journey. It was a long journey
today, straight away to Grande Anse, in the east of the island. 
She passed the steep, twilight streets, went up, up, passed the rue
Petit Versailles, until the houses broke and the path began to turn from a
street to a country road.
Right there, she did what she had never done before, turned and
gazed at the city plunged into twilight.
With the heavy load on the tray, she dared not bend her head. She
stood with her head erect and eyes lowered, beautiful and sculptural like
that of the Greek Caniphori . She was thinking, "Ah, is there someone over
there, what house is he in, what street is he still awake or still sleeping ?"  
Then, looking up, she gazed far above the sea, shining beyond Pelee's
shadow and the hills. She thought, "He came from there - where did he
come from beyond that marvelous and shining sea?" The sea had always
been one of the mysteries of his life, and the ships that came from far
beyond the horizon.  
Then she turned and resumed her journey along the twilight road
filled with the morning scent of tropical woods and flowers, she had
forgotten her fear of the  spearhead  . Zombies  and evil forms had
vanished from its path - those spirit shadows that have no existence when
forgotten.    
140  Yesterday, when she left the market, she heard the cries of the
women's market and had turned to see the  circle of people. He had killed
the spearhead  with his bare hand; snakes couldn't hurt him, the market
people had said. This fact made him less afraid of the  spearhead  . He
wasn't afraid of it, why would she? In this tropical spirit, sealed for so long
in love, Love had suddenly revealed itself to be grown and
sculptural.             
It was as if in a tropical garden passed into nature, a wind had pushed
the foliage aside revealing the marble form of the garden god, the statue
that had been there since the garden was first planted, lurking among the
leaves, and now seen for the first time. As she turned Pelee's shadow, the

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sunlight hit her and the sight spread as before. The magnificent view of
Martinique, its hills and mountains, its cane fields and distant sea views.  
She stopped, as she always stopped here, to feel the trade winds and
the warmth of the sun. There lay the mountains she had known since
childhood with La Trace, the great white road that crossed them, the hills,
the valleys, the glimpse of the distant sea towards Fort de France. It
seemed to her that she was watching it all for the first time. The world,
since yesterday, had become new, a half-cheerful , half-sad spirit had
infused itself in everything, the hills, the sea, the distance - the world,
since yesterday, would never be the same again in Marie of Morne
Rouge.   
The last time she crossed this road she had traveled mindlessly,
carefree as a child, free as a bird - now everything was different. She could
not say at all that had happened to him, it has never linked the change to
love, what Finotte and Pauline chatted so 141 with abandon. She only
knew that the big old hills spoke a new language to her and that distance
had become loneliness.   
She had walked the great white road several times alone, but she had
never felt alone until this day.
Then, as she continued her way along the blazing road in the sun and
set on either side with palm kernels, tree ferns, pomegranate flower
bushes and sun-kissed tamarinds, a voice said to her:
“ Hello, miss.  ”
There was no one other than herself on the road, nothing moved but
the shadows of the blown palm fronds and the green lizards gliding over
the dust in the sun. It was yesterday's voice. 
“ Hello, miss.  ”
She called him back and forth and made him repeat the words, then
remembered his face as she saw it looking at him to thank him for the
flower.
She now had a companion.
If you had seen her pass, fast, silent, with her burden on her head,
erect as a palm kernel, enveloped in a flame of the sun, with her luminous
eyes staring straight ahead, you might have believed her sleepwalking , a
person walking in a dream - she was.
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As she advanced, she experienced a new sensation, it was as if Saint-

Pierre had attached himself to her by a thread, the more she went, the
more this thread tightened - "Come back" said Saint- Peter, "Every
step you take takes you away from him, come back, you don't know, he's a
foreign sailor and can be carried away in one of those mysterious ships,
those ships that spread their sails and pass over- beyond the blue horizon
be lost forever.
142  It was on the Morne du Midi that the voice of Saint-Pierre said
this to him for the first time. She paused. The sun was high and poured a
torrent of light on the sea and the land.  
The rays of the sun seemed to be pushed back from the earth, rising
in a vague and dazzling jet as the water of a torrent rose in a cloud of
fog. The hills were of indefinite shapes, blue and purple, the sea had lost
its horizon and seemed to be part of the sky, and the woods of Morne du
Midi were as still as death. Nothing sings or stirs in the woods of the
Antilles when the sun holds the world like that.  
Marie, at the highest peak of Le Morne, stood as if the silence of the
world had suddenly struck her, robbing her of movement and life.
"Ah, if he left Saint-Pierre!" If she were to come back and never find
him again! 
She had only seen him twice, she had only said one word to him, if he
were to disappear forever from her life, it would be the disappearance of
a specter, of a fog, of a dream, but she would never love again. It was as if
she had been waiting for him since the beginning of the world, as if she
had lived the distant past, the old Caribbean days, passing from
reincarnation to reincarnation, through the fervor of the tropical days and
the nights, the silences of tropical forests, without finding it. And now that
she had found him, how would it be with her if she lost him?  
Her mind, absolutely pristine and frank as the mind of the prehistoric
woman, never pale with words, she stood there on the bleak looking at
the vision of immortal love, supreme and mysterious happiness, torn apart
by the thought: " Ah, should I lose it! "
He still had many kilometers to go before it reaches Grande Anse, St.
Peter's remembered, 143 whole soul and the desire to return; few
women in Europe could have resisted this call from the heart; she had
only to come back, walk in the streets, near the port, on the Place Bertine ,
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and she would be almost sure to meet him; but she had a trust to fulfill,
the goods she was carrying had to be delivered to Grande Anse, death
could have stopped but would not have prevented her in her efforts to
satisfy her confidence, and Love was powerless over her in this simple
matter as Death.   
It was his character drawn in four lines. Capable of an immortal
passion, but bound by a simple duty as matter is bound by gravity. 
Then she resumed her journey due east to Grande Anse, past the
silent woods, through the great white light of day.

144
CHAPTER XXIII
THEY MEET
Grand Anse is just a small town, rather dilapidated, on a cliff forever
swept by the sun and the trade winds.
It is the loneliest and most picturesque place in the world.
In Saint-Pierre, on the west side of the island, the sea is deep and
calm, the morning comes late because of the shadow of the mountains,
and the sunset blazes the streets like a conflagration. The first rays of the
sun hit Grande Anse, the morning rushes over the city through large waste
of the purple sea; the dawns are immense here, what you see is the
illumination of a world; on one side, everyone from the ocean quivering
and leaping into the light, on the other, everyone on the island. Mountains
that come to life on a sky that still leaves a trace of stars, Pelée's cloudy
turban, first a luminous mist like a vast nebula that has just been born,
then a burning golden fleece. Then, as if the shadows of the night were a
garment stripped off and let slip, the great mountain unrolls and rises an
emerald green cone,     
Saint-Pierre is still in the shadows, but the entire east side of the
island is scorching in the sun. Saint-Pierre has its feet in the Caribbean Sea,
but Grande Anse is bathed by the Atlantic. The south-equatorial current
and the trade winds keep the shore still booming with waves.  
145  Marie, taking the national road, heard the sea like the blast of a
vast shell, before the first houses of the city appeared. She entered the

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main street, which is an extension of the road, stopped at the shop of Mr.
Carbet, a former sun-dried Creole trader , who could remember the days
when Grande Anse was prosperous with sweets. and plantations worked
under the old slavery regime. M. Carbet inspected the goods which had
been sent to him by M. Sartine, loaded the tray with other goods to be
returned, and invited the girl to sit down, rest and have a drink.  
When she had rested, having still an hour before leaving on her
return to Saint-Pierre, she let the old man take a nap and went out to look
at the sea.
Always, when she came to Grande Anse, she would come, if she had
time, to come to the edge of the cliff to look at the sea.
It is a wonderful sight, as the emerald waves rush over a black sooty
beach. Nowhere else is there a beach like this or such curious color
effects; white foam, white seagulls, blue sea, curving emerald waves, black
sand. Over all the sunlight and the water boom.   
As she rose, the trade wind blowing her face and floating in her dress,
she saw two white figures by the sea, the outlines of an old man and a
young man.
The old man was M. Seguin, the young man was Hubert.
Mr. Séguin, who had a house in Grand Anse and who lived there most
of the year, finding the climate much more invigorating and much less
rainy than the climate of Saint-Pierre, had met Hubert last night, after s 'to
be separated from him. him in the morning, and inspiration came to him
to invite his new friend to Grande Anse. They had driven and Hubert was
due to come back today. 
146  And up there on the Morne du Midi, Marie, ignoring all the
interest that fate took in her affairs, had fought against the desire to
return to Saint-Pierre. Duty had won its struggle against Love, but Love
had won its end. It was as if a subtle strategy had worked behind the face
of things.  
She recognized the two characters instantly, she caught her breath -
“It's Him!
Almost the moment she caught sight of them, the two men began to
turn their steps from the seashore, and the first thing that caught their

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eyes was the gem-shaped figure on the small, rounded cliff in the
scorching blue of the sky.
Mr. Séguin, despite his sixty years, was as clairvoyant as his
companion. He instantly recognized the girl, he had spoken to her
often. The prettiest carrier  of Martinique had no greater admirer than M.
Séguin.    
He raised his staff in greeting and she on the cliff raised her hand.
Then she waited for the two men to meet the black sand of the beach
and begin to climb the path to the cliff. She did not have false modesty,
she did not turn pale with the truth, the being that her soul wanted to
meet was climbing the path of the cliff and she was waiting to meet him,
without trembling, nor blushing, nor pretending to turn away. . 
"It is Mary of Morne Rouge, La Petite Marie, said the old man (as if
Hubert did not know), the prettiest carrier  of the island and the best girl -
but hold  , I'll show you.    
The sun showed it to him. The sun had taken her perfectly formed
little head in her large golden hands and was raining kisses on her
forehead, face, neck, feet; the sea wind fluttered and folded her striped
dress, which, caught at the waist, exposed her perfectly 147 formed
ankles; she could have been a Greek girl on the cliffs of Latmos , Troy
could still have been a city and Hector a living hero, so far removed from
the present times it seemed. Only, no Greek could have boasted of those
dark and luminous eyes, eyes which in the background held a trace of the
gloom of tropical forests.     
“Ah, Marie,” cried the old man, “little Marie… see, I have a friend with
me, see, what do you think of him, eh, Marie…? He is the killer of snakes,
the man who does not fear the iron  spear  , he saved a man
yesterday spearhead  , yes, and that man was Paul Seguin. Me. Yes, we
don't forget that.       
The girl was standing, while the old man chatted, looking up under his
arched eyebrows in a very charming, half-evasive way, with a half-
smile; she had met Hubert with a look of gratitude and now she stood like
that, barely looking at him, but still looking at him, barely seeming to hear
the old man, but hearing him, smiling at his words, but seeming to smile
through veil of a mysterious thought. 

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Hubert, fascinated, looked at her; she seemed an elusive being,

barely real; as if she had slipped through a crystal door in the air to stand
in the blue porch in the sun for a moment. Half child, half woman, half
spirit, half human - indeterminate as a dream.   
“Oh, you're pretty, you're sweet.
He recalled his words to the flower of love.
- Yes, said the old man, we don't forget that - a living spearhead  with
death on the tip of the tongue, and he killed it with his bare hand - give
him your hand. Mary, for the love of Paul Seguin, who knew your father
when he was prosperous before it falls into the hands of
the iron  spear  , Peter Wisdom.      
148  She walked as a child and put her hand in the wide palm
Hubert. Since the day before she had thanked him with a glance for the
flower, she had filled her thoughts. From the first moment he had met her
in the little Place de la Fontaine, she had filled his thoughts; he was
straight in love as in hate, a man without any of the false refinements of
society, but he was a man and now, as he held his hand in his, for the first
time in his life he felt taken aback , fearful as a woman, clumsy as a boy.   
He had spoken to her bravely enough in Fort Square when he had
given her the flower, but now it was different, the touch of her hand, the
look of her eyes filled him with confusion.
She, on the contrary, was calm and confident, and if an observer had
been present, more attentive than M. Séguin to the delights of the
expression, he would have read something of triumph on her face.
Her confusion told her everything, told her that she had been on his
mind, told him about his attitude of mind towards her - It was a tribute
without words.
When he released his hand, Mr. Séguin took him by the arm and they
turned away from the sea, Marie walking with them in the direction of Mr.
Séguin's house.
It was a low, frame building, the best house in town, surrounded by a
garden where the tamarinds and tree ferns all turned westward as if
distorted by the ever-blowing trade winds.
"And are you going back to Saint-Pierre, Marie?" the old man asked
when they reached the door. 
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“ Yes,  Missie  .  ”
"Walk to the end?"
“ Yes,  Missie  .  ”
149  "Well, good luck to you and have a good trip, ah, that I had your
youth and your strength ..."
He was turning towards the gate when Hubert, with a half-glance at
the young girl, said: "I too am going back to Saint-Pierre, Mademoiselle
would oppose my walking with her on the road; it's a lonely road… ” 
"You," said the old man, before Mary could speak. " My  God  , do you
think you could follow a carrier  ?"     
Hubert glanced at Marie and smiled showing his white teeth, the
question seemed absurd, contrasting its strong form with the light
silhouette of the girl. Marie was also smiling. Their eyes met for a second.  
"I'll try ... If Mademoiselle doesn't oppose such a weak companion."
Mr. Séguin laughed, not without a touch of dark humor, but he
offered no more opposition. Instead, he accompanied them to Mr.
Carbet's shop where the girl had left her tray. 
M. Carbet himself helped him put it on his head and stood with M.
Séguin to observe them as they left.
It was a little past two o'clock and the white national road stretched
out before them, balisiers, palm trees, tamarinds on either side and fields
of cane to bend. The island in front of them leaping towards the sky in
large bouquets of joyful color, violet and blue and mountain mauve, black-
blue and green of ravine and bleak: above all Pelée, with her cloud
turban. One would have imagined that a giant in play had put gum on
Pelee's head and a tuft of cotton on the gum.  
It was the only cloud in the blue sky, and as they walked, the wind,
suddenly born in the upper air, began to play with it so that it appeared to
smoke and rise like smoke.
150  It gave them something to talk about. He found it very difficult
to follow what she was saying, speaking as she did, in the patois  of the
island and this difficulty in understanding each other gave them something
to laugh about so that they were soon like two good companions, almost
forgetting, for a moment, the mysterious attraction that had drawn them
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together. Sometimes she seemed to forget it, the old mesmerism of the

road gripped her, the mesmerism of distance and light, the rock-a-bye of
movement; she hummed as if she was alone, once she put the words on
the tune it was an old Creole song, simple and painful; she sang only a few
bars then remembering that her companion was next to her, she
stopped. She hadn't forgotten him for a moment, she was singing to him
in her mind, but she had half forgotten the fact that he was listening in the
flesh.      
She was happy, completely happy. He was next to her. She knew
nothing more about love than that, two birds that flew forever side by
side in the blue sky, it was her weak conception of love, two beings who
accompanied each other in life as now, he and she accompanied each
other along the national route. road , what more could you ask for?  
They passed through hills and valleys, following the great white
road; they cut canes in the fields and the negroes took care of Marie du
Morne Rouge accompanied by a man, she had finally found a companion. 
They called her, but what they said was swallowed up, dissolved in
the languid afternoon air, it looked like voices were crossing the fields of
Dreamland. A mountain  whistler  , singing in the balisier woods, sent out
his bell notes to follow them.   
On the Morne du Midi, they stopped. The world and 151 in the
distance sea swimming in a golden mist, the mountains were shaped blue
clouds, waves violet cones; nothing was final but the summit of Pelée,
now entirely stripped of clouds and rising strident in the blue. Then they
passed by following the road that plunged into the valley and went up to
the Morne d'Avril.    
It was now that Hubert remembered Mr. Seguin's words: “You can
never keep pace with a carrier  . The girl next to him, loaded with the
heavy tray, seemed to move effortlessly, quick and silent like a cloudy
shadow. He was starting to get tired, but he didn't want to give
in. " My  God  , thought he, being overtaken by a girl. I would die first.       
To hide his weariness, he began to sing. He had a good voice and he
sent Les Filles d'Avignon  through the sugar cane fields, floating on the hot
afternoon wind, for the cane cutters to stop in their work to listen. Marie
had never heard a song like this, even though she only half understood the
meaning of the words, it seemed to open up new perspectives for her. It

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was one of the songs from the country he came from, happy and strange,
very different from the Creole songs which are all placed on the same
key: Melancholy .     
He sang Valentin de  Nantes  , and the chanty à la voile of the French
merchant service, songs strange like seagulls in the middle of these green
hills and fields of cane sugar.  
The sun was way west now, casting its full light on their faces, their
shadows stretched far along the white road, the valleys between the hills
were beginning to fill with shadow, shadow that, like a luminous blue
fluid, would fill to the brim, overflow and flood the hills, the fields and the
road.
"I would rather die than surrender," was the true burden of the songs
with which he tried to give 152 heart, his head ached, its members were
hurting, he would have given half his possessions to throwing herself in
the middle of the green stuffs on the side of the road - yet she remained
as fresh as when she had started, listening to his songs, chatting, saying
things which he only half understood, singing, sometimes, she- even,
when he stopped - what a girl! - it was as if a man had matched against an
immortal. 
Here and there along the road there were shrines of the Virgin Mary
and sometimes a fountain fed by one of the countless little streams in the
hills.
They had passed the Morne de la Croix when, through one of those
roadside fountains, his will to die before giving in left him. There was a
green shore near the fountain, huge tree ferns grew above the shore and
in the shade of their fronds the water from the fountain, escaping from a
lion's head carved in the stone, sang and whispered forever to the ferns. 
He sat down on the shore and Marie, standing in front of him, saw for
the first time the true state of affairs. She took the small vial of ratia that
the porter  still wore and a cup from her belt, put some ratia in the cup,
filled it with water, and gave it to her.   
He drank it. It was like drinking life. Then she held up the tray on her
head and asked him to help her remove it.  
The carrier  , once loaded, cannot remove the heavy tray from her
head without assistance. She doesn't dare to bend her neck for fear that it
will be dislocated by the weight.   
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He stood up and helped her, she put the tray down by the side of the
road and then sat down on the bank next to him. Ah, how good it was to
rest in the cool shade of the ferns, her fatigue projected on him like a
fallen cloak. 
He almost forgot that the being next to him was a girl. 153 It was as if
he was sitting next to a good companion after a long journey; after four
hours in the hold, he had often felt the same, resting for a moment with
Jaques on the hatch of the engine room.  
Great exertion often leaves the mind clear to perception: the
passions, desires and longing for life are calm and on the body at rest the
mind floats away from perception, lazy, alive to feelings, but halfway dead
to the thought.
He took his pipe out of his pocket - the same pipe he was smoking
under the palm trees the day Jaques, returning from the north of the islet
had thrown the crabs beside him on the sand - filled it and lit it, while that
Marie next to him, her hands joined and placed on his knees, sat down,
her eyes fixing the road in front of her yet seeming not to see her.
These fits of abstraction were characteristic of her, caused perhaps,
partly by her affairs in life, partly by her nature.
It was as if the distant mountains, the blue distances, the visions of
the distant sea which made her daily horizon, followed her through life
and closed themselves from time to time around her, separating her for
the moment from her alike.
She now seemed to have forgotten the existence of Hubert, then a
rat from the cane fields crept along the road and the sight brought her
back from her reverie, she shivered, then she gave a little laugh, tightened
her dress around him. her , and rolled up her little bare feet under her
dress.
" Ahn - here  Missie Wisdom - ah, you saw - outwit
the iron  spear  . Her head half turned, she watched the grass still vibrate
where Missie Wisdom had searched.     
154  Hubert laughs, the big field rat - and the West Indian field rat is
nature's most cunning thing, and he looks at him - carried with him a
suggestion from the captain.

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He had forgotten Sagesse, La Belle Arlésienne  and the next

expedition, for the moment.  
“Wisdom,” he said, “what do you know about Captain Wisdom, kid?
She looked up and waved her hand. One of the lovely things about
her was the way she could speak without speaking, just with a gesture, a
look, she could say things that would take a lot of words to say. Her raised
eyes and the movement of her hand indicated the captain's character
without words.  
She nodded towards the tall grass where the rat had disappeared: -
He hides in the middle of the canes, he kills the little birds that cannot yet
fly, he comes towards the henroosts of the poor and kills the little
chickens - egg-sucking - ahn - of all the nastiest things. Once ...
" said Marie, leaving the description of the romance" a spearhead  bit
him.   
"Is he dead?"
“No, it's the spearhead  that's dead. She laughed. Voltaire, sitting in
his office at Ferney , had once made the same joke about the man who
poisoned the snake. Goldsmith used the same idea with a dog for the
main protagonist of his story. She had never heard of Voltaire or
Goldsmith - she just wanted to describe Wisdom.      
Then she stood up and pointed to her shadow scattered along the
road, then the sun near the mountain tops. It was time to leave, and
Hubert, getting up, helped him lift the heavy tray to his head. 
It was already cooler, the great haze of the afternoon light had faded
and distant things were defining, the sun was rapidly approaching the
mountains.
155  “You know this Wisdom…” said Hubert walking beside her, “well,
I know him too. I will soon be traveling with him. 
She stopped and turned, facing him completely. "Going with him - a
journey." 
“Not far, I will come back.
"I'm going with him - ah, you're going with him -"
"I'll be back."

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The turmoil in his face and voice affected him strangely. He didn't
know how Wisdom came into his life before that, ruining his father,
casting a plague on his house. Wisdom was like an evil spirit to her. She
had seen his plague on many people, he had ruined his own life once and
now his shadow had fallen in his path, he was taking Hubert away.   
Hubert took her hand without resistance.
"I promised to accompany him, but I will be back."
"Ah, you promised ..."
It was final. With her, a promise once made was binding as a thing
done. 
"And when?"
"We won't go for a few weeks."
He was still holding her hand; they hadn't said a word of love yet, yet
they stood like a couple of lovers on the verge of breaking up, her trouble
had communicated in a subtle way to him. The very air around them
suddenly seemed filled with sadness, it was the light starting to fade.  
The sun had half gone down behind the mountains, cut in two by the
sharp edges of the hills; what was left of him was still furiously alive,
throbbing and seeming to fight fate; but the valleys between the hills were
now filled with darkness and overflowing, twilight rose 156 like a tide,
waves of purple shadow passing over the landscape. Behind them, if they
had turned to look, they would have seen the ghost of a moon in the lilac
of the eastern sky.    
Saint-Pierre would soon be in the middle of the setting sun, there
were kilometers to go, she gently let go of her hand, turned around and
they passed. They didn't say a word but in this moment of sadness, hand
in hand, the future of one had become part of the future of the other. He
was hers and she was his.  
Never had love come to mortals in a more idyllic way, speechless,
through the fading light, there on the white road with straight palms for
only witness.

157

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CHAPTER XXIV
FLOWER OF LIGHT
As they crossed the Morne Rouge, the last rays of the sunset were
blazing through the streets of Saint-Pierre and the moonlight in his first
quarter began to flood the world. They still had a few miles to go and now
their shadow was in front of them, vaguely sketched across the road by
the intensifying moonlight. As night approached, the air had filled with
sounds. The woods were beginning to awaken. The cabritt  wood  , the
great beetles which buzz among the tamarinds, the thousand insects of
the night harmonized, the fireflies drifted in the clouds above the
pomegranate flowers and, now, as if a door had opened. was suddenly
closed, night filled the world and stars the sky. When they reached the
bend in the road leading to Saint-Pierre, Hubert paused.       
Below them stretched the city flooded with lights, the bay was
touched by the light of the stars, and beyond the shadow of the
mountains the sea in the light of the moon.
"Tell me," he said, "I have to see you again tomorrow, where will I
meet you and when?"
She remained a moment without answering. Tomorrow she should go
to Calabasse in the distance towards Pelée and beyond Morne Rouge. The
eternal toil to which fate had condemned her left little time for romantic
encounters. Not for a moment did she think of taking time off from work
and taking a vacation; it became a part of her 158 life; quitting work,
giving up a day just for his own pleasure never occurred to him.      
“Here,” she said at last, an hour before sunset. I will then be back
from Calabasse . 
"Surely you will be here?"
"Ah!"
The word was less a word than a sigh.
Surely there? - nothing that death would prevent him from being
there, hills and mountains, endless roads to be covered by his little feet,
the heat of the day or the storm, nothing surmountable by the human
heart and the will could not prevent it from being there, and she said it all
in that sigh that was half a word.

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He took her hand and brought it to his lips for a moment. It was their
first kiss. Then side by side they started to descend the steep town path. It
was late for St. Peter's where people would go to bed soon after sunset,
the moon was rising just over the mountains and the sound of the sea was
rising from the bay, breathing through the empty streets and mingling
with the ripples and ringing of fountains and streams.   
The street of the precipice was filled with moonlight. The old street
tonight was the romance itself made visible. The houses with heavy
shutters, the coignes of shade, the moonlit pavement leading the eye
towards the phantom of a silver sea.  
As she entered the street, she turned and held out her hand to
him. She didn't want him to go any further, Man'm Charles would be
seated to let her in. She had never arrived so late and although she had no
qualms about being late, she didn't want her aunt to. to hear him say
goodbye to Hubert, that would mean explanations. All this day, its blue, its
perfume, its mystery; 159 the sunlight and the hills, the distant ocean, the
twilight in which her soul had met and touched the soul that had come to
find her across the sea, it all looked like a flower mysterious colored in the
colors of the earth but immortal like the light of the stars.   
Finotte , Florine, Lys, wandering in the fields of youth had picked
roses, lilies, flowers for a moment. She wandered alone, had found this
flower of light, immortal and indestructible. Let the world go by, let the
man she loved betray her, let whatever might come, her flower would
never wither.  
He watched her die in the street of the precipice, she, whose grace
Theocritus could have sung in the heat of a Sicilian night, and as he looked
at her, just a moment, he came upon him, uneducated as he was. . , a
blast from a long time ago. It was as if the doors had opened to all the
songs, scents and starlight of all the nights of the past, nights by the
Sicilian sea before Taormina became a desolation, songs love blown on
the roses, roses casting their perfume to the sea and the stars. 
He saw the little figure, now, far down the street, pause in front of a
house on the right side, then disappeared, leaving the rue du Precipice
deserted. He turned back to the house, walking slowly; it was still early, as
Europeans judge early, but Saint-Pierre was already asleep. In a French
town at this hour the cafes were still blazing, the streets full, the theaters
not yet empty; but Saint-Pierre, like a child, fell asleep in the
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darkness; silent by the murmur of the sea below and the woods above,
and lit by fireflies and stars.     

160
CHAPTER XXV
SIMON SERPENTE
He was awakened from his sleep the next morning by a voice outside
his door.
It was the voice of Captain Sagesse. Then there was a knock on the
door and instantly on the spot it opened and the captain entered the
room. 
Hubert had slept late, the morning was full and the light was strong
enough to show Sagesse's face and expression. Something was obviously
the question. He closed the door and crossed the room.  
“Here's a pretty thing,” said Sagesse. "I am betrayed, my affair has
exploded… Did you speak? 
"Spoken - on what?"
“ My God!  What other than shipping.  
"I, never - not a word - at least -"
"Yes?"
“I told a man that I was going on a trip with you, but I didn't say
anything about the nature of the trip.
"Who was the man you spoke to?" "
“An old gentleman named Seguin.
"Hell!" cried Wisdom, springing from the chair he had taken his seat
on. “Seguin. There is only one Seguin on the island - ah, that's where the
money comes from… ”He stopped talking, sat back in the chair, crushed
his Panama hat, which he had taken off. , between the palms of her hands
and gazed down at the ground with a frown on her forehead and pursed
lips.   

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161  The night before, Jules, his first companion and henchman, had
brought him the wind of a rumor which circulated in the midst of the bars
on the harbor side.
A rumor that Missie Wisdom had discovered the whereabouts of a
wreck laden with barrels of gold dollars, that he was going to search for it,
but would most likely fail as another expedition began, funded by a much
richer and more powerful man . as the captain.
It all came from Jules himself, who, in his cups, had told a woman of
color about the secret that Wisdom had let him understand. The harbor's
hatred for Wisdom had fueled the other imaginary expedition. 
In reality, nothing of any importance was known. Yet Sagesse, with
whom suspicion was almost an illness, was sure that Hubert had betrayed
him. The only thing that made him uncertain about this was the fact that
Hubert probably didn't know any rich man capable of doing anything
stupid. And now, Hubert had confessed to having spoken to Séguin on this
subject! Seguin, one of the richest men on the island and the greatest
enemy of Wisdom.    
Everything was clear.
Another man would have given free rein to his temper, accused
Hubert in his face of imaginary treason, came to take his hands off him.
But that was not Captain Sagesse's way.
Hubert was necessary for him as a working partner. If money was
found, a single white man could have extremely difficult times with the
black crew of La Belle  Arlésienne  . He did not have time to find another
white man to take the place of Hubert, simply because now the secret was
known, the expedition was to start as quickly as 162 possible. No, it would
be very rude to fight with him now, after - ah, yes, after when the money
was saved and safe on the ship, when he discovered the temper of the
crew under the pressure of treasures, then it would be different. He then
promised himself some satisfaction, and promising himself that, he
relaxed his eyebrows and stopped pursing his lips.       
“After all,” he said, “what does it matter? You say you didn't say
anything to Paul Seguin. I believe you. All the same, he got wind of the
affair, he is going to send a man for the same job… ”   

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" Here,  " said Hubert, "same job, how can he, when no one knows the
island except you and me?"  
“Ah,” said Wisdom, “that's the mystery - how indeed? But he knows it
and that's enough for me. I'm starting in three days. "  
"Three days!"
"Yes, by working overtime, I'll get the Belle's  cargo out the day after
tomorrow night—"  
" Vé  , but you'll want time to tackle ..."  
“Oh, my  God  , ” Wisdom said, “do you think I ever say I'm going to do
something without having my plans ready? Come with me and you will
see. We can have breakfast somewhere together and have a chat when
I'm done.    
Hubert got up and dressed, then the two men left the house and
walked down the rue du Morne side by side towards the port. Often in her
life Wisdom had been approached about sunken treasure. The Caribbean
and the Atlantic, around the Bahamas, offer a beautiful ground to the
seekers of theoretical treasures, the locations of the sunken ships had
been brought to him off Rum Cay, off Grand Cayman, off Matanzas. The
ships were there enough just 163 waiting to be scratched, but Wisdom
has nothing to do with them. He had a deep knowledge of the sea and its
deception. He knew that although the ships were there, they were
tormented by the currents, currents which varied with the ebb and flow so
that the divers could only work by relaxation; he knew the power of these
currents to gather sand and hide treasures. He had seen the end of a
broken cable go up in deep water, half a mile from it, tied by the malicious
hands of the currents as if a giant had played with it.        
"When a treasure ship falls prey to the currents of the sea, there is no
point in chasing treasure or nothing other than deception," was an axiom
with him.
What led him to the current adventure was the fact that the ship lay
in an immobile lagoon in which diving operations could be conducted as
easily as in a lake. It wasn't sanded but coral , and if there was any "stuff"
in it, a few loads of dynamite would soon expose it. 
The morning was bright on the sea when they arrived at the port
side, La Belle Arlésienne  was lying on the blue water, the lighters beside
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her and the cargo coming out to the sound of the winch pawls and
the song of the negroes. .   
At Fort de France Ay ho!
At Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux ,
Ay ho!
At Fort de France ,
At Fort de France,
Ay ho!

South of La Belle Arlésienne  a large three-masted 164 was weighing

anchor, a cable ship that the Grappler was  surveying the bay
sounding. The water sinks to an enormous depth here between
Martinique and Dominica and from the Grappler  on the violet blue of the
“depths” came the low hum of the Kelvin sounder sewing machine at
work.        
The  canoeists were paddling their tiny cargoes around the New York
steamboat that had arrived the night before and would leave at
noon; we could see  the little boaters,  slips of lemon-colored children
standing and diving in search of coins thrown by the passengers.      
It was a picture full of the spirit of the morning, full of color, light and
movement, the hot wind of the tropics waving the flags and shaking the
sails; the seagulls fished, glistened snow-white in the wind,
their quarrelsome cries crossed the bay with the clatter of winch pawls,
capstan pawls and anchor chain, and the endless chanty -    
At Fort de France Ay ho!
At Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux ,
Ay ho!
At Fort de France ,
At Fort de France,
Ay ho!

Weak, musical with distance.

Wisdom, leading the way, they passed along the shore as far as
Place Bertine .

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The sun had just hit Place Bertine over Pelée's shoulder. In the flare
light in the morning with the sea and the wind shaking tamarind, it formed
a 165 light image; colorful women's dresses, yellow madras turbans, men,
some dressed in white, some half-naked, rolling sugar caps, laughing and
singing while working, all colored men, from white Creole to black negro
from jet; children - and you can be sure that wherever there is sugar in the
cane or barrel you will find children - playing games, spreading
messages; children as black as pupils, as yellow as bananas, honey-colored
babies naked as the day they were born; on all the hot wind of the tropic
which blows lazily, mixing the smell of the sea with the perfume of the
earth, the smell of cigars - because even women smoke
the black episodes  of Martinique , - and the subtle and omnipresent smell
loose sugar.         
Wisdom led the way through the Square to the row of warehouses
and downspouts that lined it on the edge of the shore. He stopped in front
of an arcade giving access to a large twilight warehouse, glanced in the
darkness of the place as if he were looking for someone or something,
then entered followed by Hubert. 
It was an extraordinary warehouse, this one smelling of tar, sailcloth
and rope. Piles of rusty chains, cables, old anchors, capstan bars, spars of
all kinds, blocks of all sizes lay, and in the darkness ropes and scraps of
material hung from the beams above. of the head gave a final touch to the
image. One could have imagined a cave in which a ship had come to
wreck, or several ships for that matter.  
In the midst of all waste and bric-a-brac, the owner of the place, Mr.
James, known as Jaques any short  by Port captains of Spain in Port Royal,
moved on surveillance of three men who were engaged with palm and
needle patched a veil unfurled over a vacant space of the floor.  
There are men who, like vultures, make their living 166 out of the
ruin and dead bones of things, only in this way they prosper, Jaques was
one of those men, though you would never have guessed
his cultural instincts from his appearance which was more of a plump and
successful businessman. past the prime of life, graying hair, clean shaven,
still smiling, still calm, still polite, still seeming to give in to your desires -
but we'll do good business. 
His business in life was to buy old ships and sell for next to nothing,
and sell the leftovers for a profit. If you wanted an anchor or a set of sails
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or a spar, he could always provide you. He would buy wrecks even when
they were sunk - that is, of course, if they were lying in shallow water. He
had thus bought the Amine  -  Martell  , lying on the thundering beach west
of Grande Anse. The bay in which she lay was a death trap inaccessible
from sea or land, the cliffs were sheer walls of black rock polished and
flawless; by lowering the men to the edge of the cliff with ropes, he had
saved thirty-five thousand dollars in gold coins - a profitable business
considering the fact that he had only paid two thousand dollars for her
while she was resting.       
From Curaçoa to Puerto Rico he had conducted rescue operations,
fighting the sea for picking up ships, conducting operations in person
when there seemed to be a good chance of good profits at work.
Sagesse took M. Jaques aside and explained to him what he wanted
while Hubert sat on a spar and watched the sail correctors work.
“I have some diving work on hand,” Sagesse said. “I want two
wetsuits, a pump, everything is complete. Do you have them and how
much are you going to charge to hire them for two months? "  
167  "Two thousand dollars as a deposit and five hundred for the
rental," Jaques replied without hesitation.
"Three hundred and not a hundred more."
“My price is five cents - and if you don't like it, I'm sorry. I have
already been approached by a gentleman on the same subject. I expect
him here anytime, if he makes the deal with me, where else will you get
scuba gear - not Martinique.  
It was of course a lie, but the mind of Wisdom, clouded with
suspicion, saw it as confirmation of the rumor that another expedition was
on foot. Jacques, vigilant as a bird of prey, saw the effect of his words
without fully understanding the reason. 
“Who is that other person, then,” says Wisdom. "You can at least tell
me his name." 
"I never give names in business, Captain, but since you've been my
client so far, I'm going to whisper something in your ear."
"Yes."

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“Well,” Jaques said lowering his voice, “I guess he's a gentleman in

the same business as you.
"The devil!" said Wisdom. Then, remembering, he laughed.  
“If he is, he's in a business that won't make him a lot of profit - well, I
can't waste any more time, let's see the costumes and the device.
Jaques led the way through a door leading to the rear rooms, where
the wetsuits, the pump, the air tubes were in a shed, all almost new and in
good working order. The pump has been constructed in such a way that it
can be fixed in a boat or be used on board the ship. La Belle
Arlésienne  had a boat that would do the job perfectly, she would have to
be hoisted across the islet and floated in the lagoon. the 168 mind busy
arranging all of these details Captain as he examined the
equipment. Then, turning to Jaques:      
"Three hundred for the rental and not a cent more."
“Five cents and not a cent less. Why should I let you have a thing for
three cents that I can rent to someone else for five - that's no business. 
"Four cents, come on, the money paid and the deposit."
"Five cents and not a cent less."
"Four fifty.
"Why should I defraud myself fifty dollars."
“Well, five hundred is it.
"And of course, Mr. Captain, you will be responsible for any injuries to
the craft.
"There won't be any injuries - and now that we've closed the deal, I'm
going to tell you the name of the man who wanted to cut me off - who
wanted to hire these things."
Jaques, happy with the deal he had made, delighted at the success of
his ruse, and more delighted that it was the cunning Captain Sagesse who
had been the victim of his bluff, said nothing, but smiled.
"Should I tell you?"
"If it pleases you."
"Well, it was Paul Seguin, I am not right?
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"I can't say - I never tell business secrets."

“Look here,” said Wisdom. “I want this problem fixed. You and I have
known each other for years. I want the information because I believe I
have been betrayed on certain matters that I have in hand. See here, if
you whisper the name of the man who told you about these wetsuits, I'll
never say it, but I'll be sure in my mind and my information. "    
He took the money out of his pocket as he spoke. "You will not tell - it
will be entirely between us?" 
169  "Yes I promise."
"So give me your ear." Jaques approached his head next to that of the
other and said in a low voice: 
"Paul Seguin."
- Thank you, said Sagesse, handing him the money M. Jaques
pocketed. Five dollars for a simple lie was the best deal he ever got . 
As Sagesse passed through the warehouse, he found Hubert still
sitting on the spar, watching the sail correctors at work. He could have
shot him with all the fun in life, but he greeted him happily and with a
smile. 
It is a serious popular mistake to attribute any sense of honor to a
scoundrel.
He has the keenest sense of honor - in others. He feels when he is
betrayed, just as an honorable man feels it, perhaps, all the more keenly. 
- And now that we have finished our business, said Jacques, do you
not want to refresh yourself, you and your friend? He opened a door
leading from the warehouse to a room, half living room, half office,
ushered them in and opened another door, called for coffee, rum and
cigarettes. 
In an instant, a servant, carrying an immense tray spread with
the ordinary Martinique breakfast  , entered. Hubert barely heard the
servant entering, he was examining a picture hanging on the pine plank of
the wall, a small old-fashioned woodcut that had caught his eye as soon as
he entered and now held him fascinated like the snake. on the Place du
Fort had welcomed old M. Séguin.    

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It represented a small and hideous man, holding a huge sword in one

hand and a whip in the other.
He was dressed in a shirt and loose pants, a wide belt was around his
waist and from the belt protruded the butt of a pistol.
170  It was horrible and grotesque. The man's head and face were
barely larger than a child's head and face; yet the face had in it
the ferocity of a demon; it was extraordinarily wide on the cheekbones.   
The limbs, as far as the clothes allowed them to be seen, were
deformed, and as Hubert stood fascinated and repelled, a shiver ran
through him. He had seen this man - this thing - before -
where? Impossible to say; in a past life, in a dream - seen, perhaps, in the
middle of a crowd, through the tobacco smoke of a bar - somewhere, at
some point in his life, he had seen that hideous face.   
Moreover, he felt that the creature, half-man, half-demon , had once
entered his life, bringing evil there. Yet, madly seeking his memory, he
could not remember anything of the circumstance. 
"Coffee or cognac?"
M. Jaques was talking and Hubert turned away from the table and
accepted a cup of coffee and a cigarette, took a seat at the table with the
others.
Jaques, a cigar in his mouth and a cup of coffee in front of him, was in
the middle of a business conversation with Sagesse and Hubert,
pretending to be interested in their conversation, but hearing nothing,
looked around the room, taking in the details.
The walls were decorated with drawings of ships, Caribbean paddles,
gourds, a display case containing beetles and tarantulas, things of the sea
and land, but above all of the sea.
Here is a map of the Yucatan Strait marked in ink with the soundings
of a wreck; beside it, a map of the waters just west of Nassau where there
is a large sea pond nearly two hundred miles north to south
surrounded by shoal water and reefs, this map was also marked with the
position of a wreck. A combat lantern 171 that could have illuminated Van
Horne on a night expedition, hung from a staple near the maps, Jacques
had picked up in the sand near San Juan; an old curacao flask with a
leather handle, the oldest form of the bottle the Dutch exported their
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liquor in, hung by the lantern. The history of the Caribbean and the
Spanish Hand resided here in these things and many more, but, letting his
eyes wander as best they could, Hubert could not prevent them from
returning to the image that had fascinated him.     
Taking advantage of a pause in the conversation between Jaques and
Sagesse, Hubert leaned forward:
- Excuse me, sir, he said, pointing to the painting, but you have a
strange portrait on your wall, and the strangest thing is that I have the
impression of having seen the gentleman before.
Jaques looked at the photo and laughed. “ Well  ,” he said, “if you've
seen him alive, you're older than me. You've probably seen it in print, but
not as good as this one, it's Coullier , very old, and I took it for a song.    
"What about the man's name?" "
"It's Simon Serpente."
"Who was he?"
"What! You 've never heard of Simon Serpente - ah, but I forgot, you
are, no doubt, fresh in the West Indies. Well, sir, Simon Serpente was a
demon, he was a man all the same. ..  
There, Wisdom nodded as if he knew all about Simon Serpente.
“But,” Jaques continued, “he was still a demon. We had quite a few
demons in these areas in the old days, but Simon overcame them all. He
was one of the last and the worst pirates. Kidd, Horne,
Singleton 172 weren't as bad as him. What are you saying, Captain?     
“O, by all accounts he was a tough man,” said Wisdom. “I never got
along with these relentless scoundrels, if they had lived in my time, I
would have eradicated them if I had been in power. The government
could have done it then, only they were bribed. Don't tell me, the
governors of the time grew into pirates.   
“That's right,” Jaques said, “and Serpente kept his head out of the
noose more than once while gilding it, all the same, Serpente was feared
for himself, they said he didn't. was not a man, they said no one can kill
him and when he leaves this life he should die with his own hand, people
imagined he brought bad luck to anyone who crossed his path or to whom
he was looking askance.
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“This is all women's talk,” said Sagesse, “there is no bad luck - and no
devil for that matter - go on.
“Well,” Jaques said, “if there is no bad luck, anyway, Serpente was
unlucky and he got such a name for being the Devil himself that he did.
fear of men, even of comrades. of its own character.
"He had been pirating for years and he had made a very big fortune,
no one knew where he had hidden it, the wind got there that he had his
own island somewhere in the Caribbean but no one ever tried
to find, because, I'm telling you clearly, if his treasure had been lying on
the beach there, people would have let him lie ...
"Fools," said Sagesse.
"Maybe, but, all the same, I doubt that I would have wanted to
interfere myself. People said it was the devil's treasure and was
well guarded - I'm not sure they were fools either. I know Monsieur le
Capitaine , 173 you are skeptical about these points, but I have seen bad
effects following the money obtained by force and blood and
inherited. Anyway, Simon Serpente's money I wouldn't have
touched. God! the things that man was credited with I didn't want to talk
about, even before you did, and so he went through life until he suddenly
gave up on hacking. It was also a most extraordinary end to his piracy,
because he had fallen under the blow of Laropé off Matanzas. Laropé , you
should know, was a pirate brother, his ship was
the Golden-  Shell  , Serpente's ship was the Puerto  Mexico  , both ships had
pursued a brigantine when Serpente signaled Laropé to disembark, that
the prize was the his, as he had done. has insight first; Laropé refused, and
the next thing he knew was that his mast had been shot down.             
“Then, forgetting the brigantine, the two pirates closed in. It was off
Matanzas and the shore was packed with people watching, they said the
guns could be heard in Havana with the wind blowing from the east. The
result was that Serpente landed the Puerto  Mexico  next to
the Golden-  Shell  , boarded her, put all the men to death, and
hanged  Laropé  from his own main yard for a pirate  .        
“Then Serpente, leaving the Golden-Shell to  float abandoned, moved
away towards Cape Sable. He never raised the black flag again and the
next thing we hear from him is that he turned his ship into a slave. Turned
respectable, so to speak.    

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“The men didn't fear him so much now. They said if he was truly a
demon he wouldn't have turned a new leaf. They began to remember his
crimes and a movement was launched against him.  
"He heard this, but he didn't seem to care, most likely putting him in
idle talk, until one day specific news came to him as he was leaving the
American coast with a 174 cargo of slaves was a corvette out against him
and that when he was caught, he would be hanged. 
“Sure enough, two days out of port, he saw a corvette and she chased
him. The Puerto  Mexico  could give heels to anything in those waters, and
by sunset the corvette was only showing its sails above the horizon and by
the next dawn it was gone; but Serpente knew that it was all over for him
in these seas. The devil had marked him with such a face and shape that
he couldn't hope to hide, so he may have set sail for that island where he
had placed his treasure - at least we never have. reviewed.     
“Ah, my God!  Hubert suddenly cried. He stood up and walked over to
the picture on the wall.    
Suddenly he had flashed her where he had seen the frame of that
face, that twisted shape - the hideous island skull, the bones, could they
have been Simon Serpente's remains?
It seemed insanely improbable, until in his mind the sight of the purse
and the belt, with the initials SS on the buckle.
Then he suddenly felt physically ill.
The hideous demon in the painting had then entered his life, he could
not doubt that the skeleton was that of Serpente and that the money in
the belt was that of Serpente.
And he had made war on Jaques for that money and he had killed
Jaques. For a moment, he saw evil in all its horror and the stubborn grip
that evil has on life. Watching this hideous ape-man was bad enough, but
to feel that you were his heir and that, quarreling over this inheritance,
you had killed your friend, was beyond words shocking.  
175  It is so rare that God gives us an objective vision of evil, that the
sight when it comes is stupendous and shakes the soul.
Hubert looked at the photo of the man whose money had stained his
hands. This man, long dead ago, Anisette, alive, but thousands of

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kilometers away, these two were of the same brand, belonged to the
company of evil, they could not touch anything without defiling and
betraying him to evil, just as they had done. contamina Hubert and
delivered him to the hands of Wisdom. 
Controlling his emotion, he turned again to the table from which
Wisdom was now rising to leave.
Monsieur Jaques accompanied them through the store, bade them
farewell, and the next moment they were under the blazing sun in
Place Bertine , Sagesse leading the way to the water's edge.
“I'm going on board to see how things go,” he said, “you better come
with me and help me. We can have something to eat on board and you
will want to redo your cabin - Hello, bring your boat here! " 
He called a longshoreman - a negro, black and fantastic like
a golliwog - who was paddling his boat along the shore, the man brought
the boat up as directed and they intervened.
The morning had become totally windless and the sea like a
mirror. Far away towards Dominica, an encalmed inter-island schooner lay
helpless, the snow-white sails projecting a mile long reflection on the
water, the three-masted which had raised its anchor had barely filled its
sails when the calm was fell, hitting him life. Saint-Pierre, colored houses
and motionless palm trees, stood facing the blue and fiery sea. It was the
scene of a dream more vivid, such infinities colors and 176 light and
silence flow into mind the unreality of a mirage. The very sounds of the
city and of sailing in the bay were dream sounds, the voices of visionary
sailors, the murmurs of lotus land.     
Even old Belle  Arlésienne  , this witch of the ocean, was touched by
the magic of the day. Masts, spars and rigging, sun-blistered sides,
everything was reflected in the harbor mirror as its copper shone through
the emerald shadows of the water; and the southern weeds and bands
of copper- growing fuci swayed as if blown by a weak wind.    
The cargo was coming out as fast as the hand-worked winches could
lift it, Jules was watching the work, and he lowered the ladder to get them
on board. Wisdom, when he reached the deck, looked around to see how
things were going, then he entered the deckhouse followed by Hubert. 
"You'll take the same cabin," said Sagesse, pointing to the dog hole on
the starboard side, "I'm going to tell Jules to ask one of the niggers to
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clean it for you, there are a lot of old trucks there. -low who wants to
change gears and that will give you more room, you won't have a lot of
gear to pack I guess.
"Not much - you say you start in three days, today is Tuesday ..."
"I start on Friday."
“Ah, yes, Friday - well, it seems to me that it's not a very good day to
start.
“ Cordieu!  Cried Wisdom, suddenly showing irritation , " what kind of
old woman talk is that." What's wrong with Friday? "    
Hubert leaned against a partition, his arms crossed, he had barely
said a word since he had left Jacques' store and Sagesse had noticed his
silence.
177  “I don't know what's wrong with Friday, but I do know that with
a whole week to choose from, I would choose another day, especially
when going on an expedition like this. However, you can choose which day
you like. I just have one question for you.  
"Yes?"
"Do you want to release me from the company and have someone
else take my place?"
Wisdom burst out laughing, sat down at the table, crossed her arms
and, leaning on her crossed arms, stared at her companion.
He didn't speak for a moment. He seemed to be trying to read
Hubert's innermost thoughts. Then 'no', he cried, 'a hundred times no,
you're part of the company, you gave your word, and now you want
to back down - I find this morning that my plans have been betrayed at
this. cursed Séguin. I say nothing about it; but what I'm saying, you come
with me or I will take you with a member of the Royal Guard, we will
search for the remains of a gentleman who has been killed - we will search
for his clothes and his bones. We're going… ”Wisdom stopped while
Hubert, leaving the partition, took his place at the table directly in front of
him.     
"You will do a lot," said Hubert, "if I grab you by the throat and drag
you across the bridge and throw you into the harbor like the carrion that
you are." I gave you my word to accompany you on your damn expedition,
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and I will. Let’s say no more. You talk about bone hunting, you will find
them. Skeleton Island should be the name of this place and if you don't
leave your own skeleton there, you will be in luck.    
"Threats!" cried Wisdom, pretending to get up from the table. 
"Threats - I never threaten and I do not threaten you now." I say
you'll be lucky if you not leaving 178 bones behind you because the place
is cursed - soon - "  
He leaned across the table in front of Wisdom, and, lowering his
voice: “See you soon, I told you how I fought with a man over there and
how, by accident, I killed him; well, I didn't tell you everything - after his
death, things happened. 
"Yes?"
"Even before he died I didn't like the place, that ship sunk in the
water seemed like the devil's ship to me, no one has ever seen a ship like
this before, she was like an old man drowning corpse and then all of a
sudden just at sunset it came to life, lit up as if it were hanging with
lamps ...
“Phosphorus,” says Sagesse.
“It wasn't, it was just the light in the sky, God's good sunlight, but I've
never seen such a thing before. Well, what happened the next day? I killed
my friend, threw my knife at him, but I didn't mean to kill, no, but the
devil who lives on this island made sure the knife did its job. The next day,
as I stood on the reef, looking for ships, I felt someone stand behind
me. There was no one to see but there was somebody there, the seagulls
over there aren't right, God  damn they screaming at a - then in the night
someone beat a drum by my tent - almost left my sanity in that place -
well, now listen, i escaped, i was like, 'i'm never coming back here, look at
my luck. I meet you. I take too much rum, talk to you and show you that
cursed gold, and what's the result? Well, I'm going home, against my will…
”        
“Make a fortune against your will,” Wisdom said with a sneer, “and
you call it bad luck.
"Fortune" cried Hubert, echoing the sneering tone of 179 the other,
"and you expect to make a fortune in this place?" 

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"If he's there, I'll take him."

"I'm telling you if he was lying on the beach, you wouldn't take him."
"And who will stop me?"
“There's one over there that will stop you.”
"And who is he?"
“Simon Serpente.”
Wisdom looked at his companion as if he doubted his sanity.
“Simon Serpente.”
“Yes, in the last few hours I've found out which ship is lying out there
in the water, and whose money we found in the belt. I told you there was
a skeleton by money; Now, see here, the skull wasn't bigger than that. He
held his hands together as if he was lightly hugging a child's head, "and it
wasn't a straight skull, well, I said to Jaques, 'Well, he must have been a
beauty. , the man that it belonged to ', so the bones weren't the bones of
an ordinary man, the minute I laid eyes on that picture of Serpente, I was
like,' I ' have seen this thing before, but where? It was not until Mr. Jaques
told me his story that I recognized the truth of the matter and that the
skeleton was Serpente's skeleton.    
"Garbage," replied Wisdom, "you are full of outlandish
fantasies; Serpente - I don't believe a quarter I heard of the guy - you
sound like an old Creole. If Serpente ever lived, he died in some grog shop,
like the rest of his kind, filled with balloon juice; or was hit on the head in
an alley brawl… ”   
“For a moment, I showed you the belt and purse that I brought from
the island; on the belt buckle 180 two letters were scratched, you yourself
examined them - what were they?  
Wisdom jumped in her chair. He had suppressed his memory. 
“ Cordieu!  He cried, I remember now.  
"What were the letters?"
"By my faith, it is strange, SS Those would be the initials of the
comrade."
"Just so."

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“Simon Serpente.”
"Just so."
"You haven't scratched these letters yourself?"
Hubert laughs.
"At that point, did I know anything about Serpente?"
"It is true."
Wisdom's face had flushed, he sat down, his fingers drumming on the
table and his eyes fixed on his fingers.
He seemed immersed in a reverie of an exciting nature, then,
suddenly pulling himself together, he lowered his big fist suddenly on the
table.
"It's luck - you can't doubt - He went to his hive - He had left for
Europe, something happened to his ship and sank it, who knows what, but
we can swear he left his bones close to hers. money . "
Then to Hubert: "Can't you see?"
"What?"
"The gold is there as safe as I am."
"I'm sure."
"So, what you are complaining  - you , Mordieu  , you seem to have
lost a fortune instead of having found one.     
"Maybe it would be better to lose a fortune than to find 181 one like
this." Have it however you like, but at least remember my words if
anything should happen.  
"And what can these words be that you have?" Wisdom asked,
getting up, going to the locker and pouring herself a dram . 
"Just this, there is a curse on this safe place as my name is Hubert
Voulton, and the man who goes there looking for treasure will find more
than he expects."
Wisdom drank his dram.

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182
CHAPTER XXVI
ISLAND OF SKELETON
Then Hubert came to the bridge. He had said what he was thinking
and he felt easier. He had tried to dissuade Wisdom from disturbing this
resting place of bones and possible treasure, Wisdom would not be
dissuaded, all the same Hubert felt easier. He had, in plain English, a holy
terror of Simon Serpente. His suffering on the island, his bad luck killing
Jaques and betraying himself to Sagesse, the horrible personality of
Serpente and the fact that he saw and manipulated his bones just before
Jaques' tragedy, all of those things combined with superstitions to make
this man-monster, who died a long time ago, a living and vital personality
for Hubert. He feared him much more than he feared the devil. He was
not at all sure that the devil had any existence or power over man,      
For Hubert, the Ka  of Simon Serpente existed on this island, keeping
the bones he had once surrounded and the treasure he had once
amassed; trying to dissuade Wisdom from the expedition he felt he
had propelled this Ka  , the wrath of the thing he believed would fall upon
Wisdom, and as he leaned over the rampart reflecting on the situation and
the next expedition, an ungodly curiosity awoke. in his mind as to the
outcome of the case.     
I doubt that he is cut off now, even 183 if he could; curiosity, whose
hold on the superstitious mind is deep, held him in its hands.  
"Wait," Curiosity said , "I'll show you something strange."
As he looked across the blue water of the harbor at the colorful city,
the palm trees, the tall woods, leaping green against the blue sky, he
remembered Mary. Simon Serpente had chased her out of his mind for a
moment. He was to meet her tonight, two hours before sunset, on the
road to Morne Rouge.  
Contrasting with his dark thoughts, how this faithful figure seemed
brilliant, contrasted with the demonic image of Serpente, how beautiful
this form was! From where he was standing he could see, or thought he
could see, the beginning of the road to Morne Rouge, up there where
houses fell and palm trees replaced buildings. 
His heart leaps in place.

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As he leaned over the railing and watched, Wisdom stepped out of

the deckhouse. The negroes who worked on the cargo had taken off for a
spell, boats had come with the wives of the longshoremen, bringing their
food; each woman had with her a basket covered with a white sheet and
each basket was divided into compartments containing fruit, fish -
usually sádines  - and bread.    
While the men chatted with their wives, Sagesse and Hubert walked
around the bridges; the cargo was half out; it was a very light cargo and it
was easy to see that La Belle Arlésienne  would be cleared and ballasted on
Friday morning. Having satisfied himself on this point, Hubert went to the
little hut that had been allocated to him and began to collect the rubbish
with which it was cluttered, old bottles and cigar boxes, bundles of old
newspapers, all kinds of useless raffles; when the place was
cleared , 184 lunch  was ready, the corossoles , chicken and rice, fruit and
the inevitable rum. The negro cook put things on the table and
retired.         
Wisdom was joyful during the meal, even friendly; you would never
have thought that this man had threatened his dining companion a short
time ago. I doubt even if his cheerfulness was assumed or his kindness
false; he had the art, almost a horrible art, of tidying up in his mind the
uneasiness, mistrust, suspicion, against a man, keeping them fresh and
fresh until they were wanted. He was fairly certain that Hubert had
betrayed the island's secret to Séguin, but he showed nothing of it in his
own way, perhaps felt nothing in his mind, as he enjoyed the excellent
food. before him and spoke of trade, cargo, customs - and the hundred
and one things that are related to commerce, the tropics and the sea.    
After lunch  , Hubert lit a pipe and lay down in his cabin for a nap; he
kept the door open for coolness and he could see beyond the twilight
cavern of the deckhouse a glimpse of the sunny deck; then he fell asleep,
and when he awoke, it was three o'clock.    
He got out of the bunk and came onto the deck. The winches were
still working; Wisdom was nowhere to be found; Jules, who was
overseeing the unloading of the cargo, said Missie Sagesse disembarked
an hour ago.   
He was very friendly, Jules, and eager to please, and letting the hands
take care of themselves for a moment, he called a boat ashore which was

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dragging around the ship and with his own hands let go of the rope ladder
to Hubert.
In a few minutes, the boat had landed Hubert on the harbor steps; he
paid the man, and by going up 185 Passage Bartine , made for the rue
Victor Hugo. He didn't know that one of the boatmen was following him.   
On entering the rue Victor Hugo, he met M. Séguin, who had just
returned from Grand Anse; it was one of those accidental meetings that
fate organizes. M. Séguin shook hands with his curator, then, taking him
by the arm, led him across the path to the Café Palmiste.  
An hour later, Sagesse was informed that Hubert had met M. Séguin,
obviously by appointment, in the rue Victor Hugo, and that the two men
had entered a cafe.
This confirmation of his suspicions was the only thing that wanted to
fix in Wisdom's mind the certainty that he was betrayed.
He wasn't afraid that Séguin would steal a march from him, for La
Belle Arlésienne  would be absent long before Séguin could command a
ship.  
But he swore a dreadful oath to be on par with Hubert when the time
came - and the place.

186
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GARDEN OF LOVE
"And now," said Hubert, "I must go.
He had been at the Café Palmiste for half an hour in front of M.
Séguin, a cup of coffee and a box of cigars.
He got up from the table and his companion got up too,
accompanying him to the door.
"Well, if you have business, I won't hold you back - so you start on
Friday?" I might see you before I go, anyway, remember Paul Seguin, who
is still your friend, and watch out for that Wisdom shark - you say you'll be
back in a few months, well, when you come back, come straight to Grand
Anse and we will organize a future for you, you don't have to leave the
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island, you will get married and you will settle here; I will find you a house
and a job, not in Saint-Pierre, but in Grande Anse where it is cool and
where the trade winds are still blowing.  
They shook hands and M. Séguin returned to his coffee and his
eternal cigars, while Hubert hit the town by taking the rue Carcenet which
was the closest road to his destination.
Ten minutes later, he was at the beginning of the Morne Rouge road,
at the exact spot where, the night before, he had stood with Marie
watching the lights of Saint-Pierre.
He was before his time; the sun does not reach the horizon for two
hours and a half, and leaning on the old , 187 Wall foam haunted by
lizards that protected the road to sea, he looked at the city, the harbor
and the bay .  
It was that beneficent moment of the tropic day when, "towards
evening" the world, freed from the fierce kisses of the vertical sun,
breathes again.
The light was still immense and triumphant, but the shadows
lengthened, and the old road broken, now, by shadows of wall and palm,
shadows of tamarind and ceiba , filled with the scents of tropical wood
and the scent of the sea, had found the poetry is stolen from him by the
glare of midday.
Ah, this old road of Morne Rouge, trampled under the feet of
the porter  and the worker, the gardeners bringing their fruits to the
market of Saint-Pierre, and the cane cutters with their heavy cane knives
in the direction of the fields, like it looks beautiful, seen through the
past. Whoever has seen the city below and the enchanted blue bay will
never see a more beautiful sight - and no one will ever see it again.   
And her true beauty, one can imagine, is revealed only to a child like
Marie, freshly seeing the beauty of the world, or to a man like Hubert,
made clairvoyant by love.
He threw away the cigarette he was smoking and, leaning against the
wall, looked down at the sight, lazily tracing the streets below.
He could see the pale green stripe that indicated the verandas on rue
Victor Hugo; the little Place de la Fontaine; the rue Petit Versailles, and,
below, the tamarins of the place Bertine . There lay La
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Belle  Arlésienne  , a small boat , and to the south of La Belle Arlésienne  ,
crossing the bay, the small liner of Fort de France; the indescribable
splendor of the blue beyond was unfazed by the slightest breeze.          
188  Never was calm more profound; towards Dominica where the
deep purple of the water proclaimed the great depths, an inter-island
schooner lay encalmed like something that had been part of the picture
forever. And the silence of it all, the colorful city, the painted bay, the
unlimited distance! With the help of this majestic silence completing its
work, Beauty could do nothing more.   
" What!  "  
The half-whispered word, spoken behind him, shattered his reverie
and made him turn around.
She had come on the road moving silently like a breeze, she had
reached it without her knowing it, she hardly bore any stain or sign of her
long journey; upright like a caryatid under her burden, it was as if she had
carried with her during the long day all the freshness of dawn. 
All day long on the hill and the mountain, from Morne Rouge
to Calabasse , through the heat and the blinding light, she had followed
her image, and she had told him, not with her lips, but with her eyes, cast
right on him under their long, rounded black eyelashes.
The first breath of the evening breeze stirred the fronds of the palms
above her, gently fluting her delicately colored striped scarf dress. The
western sunlight enveloped her in its flame as she stood as the
embodiment of the tropics, the spirit of the western islands, a stanza of
the poem of the palm tree and the azure. 
Hubert took his hands in his and pulled her towards him, she shivered
slightly. He would have kissed her but they were not alone, a woman had
just turned the bend in the road, and from below, the bells of a mule told
that a market gardener was coming by the steep path of the rue Vauclin . 
189  "You have come."
"Ah, yes, didn't you think I would come?"
“Oh, if I hadn't thought so, I would have thrown myself into the
sea. (Provençal!) 
"You would have cared, then?"
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"Sweet - my only concern now is with you."

Straight as a flame under his charge, she listened to him, and as she
listened, her gaze seemed to pass beyond him for an infinite happy
vision. She looked like a child hearing the voice of spring for the first
time. The man holding her hands was quite far from the world, it was as if
she had led him to an extraordinary height beyond the clouds and held
him there by the hands lest he falls.  
"Ah, yes, for you that's all I want - just for you…"
He held his hands to his heart.
A bird bell from the trees beyond the road sent its golden notes
fluttering on the wind, a shadow passed them, it was a woman, a mulatto,
old, wrinkled, the image of age.
Then the mule bells whistled as the negro-led mule passed from the
steep path to the road and Marie, suddenly, like a person waking from a
dream, withdrew her hands. Hubert turned around, more and more
people were climbing the steep path in the Rue Vauclin . 
"Come," he said, "let's get away from all these people, where is it
here, so that we can be quiet and where to rest after your trip?"
“Come with me,” she said.
She led the way towards the city, they passed in one of the highest
streets and at the door of a house of great construction, whose green
shutters were drawn against the afternoon sun, she knocked.
190  A woman opened the door, she was a calendosa  , a friend of
Mary's, and the girl asked her to take her tray to keep it until the next
morning.  
Then, freed from her burden, she kissed the woman on the cheek,
thanked her and turned to Hubert.
“Come on,” she said, and the woman closed the door as they passed
away on the road. They passed through the highest streets, then down a
steep path by an old convent wall above which the palm trees of the
convent garden curved in the evening wind. Then, by a path between two
large cactus hedges she led him and voila! they were on the road which
spanned the Morne de Parnasse and near the gates of the Jardin des
Plantes.   
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The old garden had finally attracted her. Often and often she had
walked through the doors, glancing at the trees and the darkness, shining
and carefree like a butterfly. One could imagine the spirit of the place
watching the girl go by, singing, light, walking alone and content, the spirit
which is neither malignant nor benign, the spirit which
makes the mountain whistler  sing to his companion, calls for flowers into
existence, puts the flower calling to bloom and bird to bird, one could
imagine her casting her spell on the shining figure, as she walked through
her doors the other day, and, now, one would have could imagine this
nature spirit sighing in contentment in the trees bent by the wind - she
had obeyed the spell and found a mate.      
They walked through the front door and entered a world of twilight
and scent. The palm stems flew into the darkness above; aerial shoots of
wild pine, cords of convolvulus, lianas, festooned and trellised the
twilight; gigantic ferns called the eye in glades where orchids suspended
like birds ruin themselves, butterflies caught in some trap in the air.   
There was no sound except the noise of the night 191 folding wind
palms and ceiba gently caress as a broad hand. 
Here they finally found themselves alone.
He took her hands in his; then, releasing them, he held her around
her waist as their lips met and pressed together in an endless kiss. 

192
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FATEFUL LIGHT
When Martinique was a young colony, when Versailles was the palace
of a king, far in those sunny times before the storm of the Revolution, the
Jardin des Plantes de Saint-Pierre was a garden. The most curious and the
most beautiful in the world. The spacious imagination which conceived
Versailles touched the tropical forest, and the hand which
disposed Luciennes fell on ceibas , palm kernels and partridge  wood  . The
poetry and the perfect beauty of tropical trees, the splendor of creeping
plants, the fathoms of convolvulus, the aerial gardens where the orchids
swayed suspended by the cables of the Liantasse , the tree ferns, the
trumpet flowers, the star flowers, everything the gardener was waiting

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there. as in life, all the splendor of passion, the beauty of love and the
mystery of death await the poet.     
He came and the cutlasses rang amid the aerial shoots and lianas, he
did not destroy anything unnecessarily, pushing the forest back where a
path should go, making here a magical lake - less a lake than a mirror in
which tree ferns can be seen - here a glade, a twilight house for a
statue. He heard the murmur of the waterfall, whose voice still sounds like
a voice of mourning for the ruin of his work, and he brought the waterfall
into the scheme of things. You can imagine how beautiful it was, this
garden of old, fragrant, languid, sunny, twilight, filled with notes
of 193 bird bell and whistler  mountain  , the whisper of the trees and the
voice of the waterfall.     
As certainly as there were flowers in this garden, there were
lovers; the men fought and killed each other in the duel  lane  ; what
volume of romance lay here brilliantly written, brightly colored, of which
only a few torn leaves remain; faded paintings in which the forest had half
effaced the paths of the garden and the glades from which the statues
have disappeared.     
The spearhead  hides among the leaves and makes the place awful
with death. It is the crowning glory of the ruined garden.   
Hubert, releasing the girl's lips, and holding her warm body close to
him, kissed her eyes, forehead, and hair. Beyond the gates, the pavement
like a large white lamp burned in the sun trying to pierce the
darkness. The world seemed to be trying to watch them, and the forest
with its big green sleeve to shelter them from the world.  
“Come here - here! - here! forget the world and the road - follow me
where the ferns are high - in the twilight - come here! - the! 
A mountain whistler  in the half-light of the garden called his
companion; they barely heard it, but they came, taking a path to the left, a
path bordered on either side by tree ferns and a hundred feet of soaring
palm trees.   
"You love Me!"
“ Hey  ,  I've loved you since the world started.  
The answer contained the whole truth of love.

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She loved him from the beginning of the world. Eons before

Martinique saw the white men of the East, at the dawn of time, dark,
comical, her being had been projected towards hers, that she could stand
in the Jardin des Plantes hugged de Hubert a million ancestors had
lived 194 loved and dead; so that he could hug her, a million ancestors
had fought the battle of life. This embrace was the victory of the dead
over death, the triumph of life over time. In eight words, she had spoken
the secret that all lovers vaguely feel at the bottom of their being. "I love
you since the world began."      
The voice of the waterfall was now passing through the trees, a burst
of light showed where palms and angelins , ferns and ceibas , gave way to
the lake in which the torrent falls leaping, rainbow, obscured by the mist
in the middle of the foliage of the cliff; one hundred feet of cascading
water, every drop is a gem. It seemed alive and laughing, if the
water spirit ever lived it surely lived here. Then, as they stood staring at
him, as if the spirit had lost its cheerfulness, the rainbow's glare died down
and darkness spread across the clearing. The sun was sinking above the
treetops.    
Marie looked up.
“Come on,” she said, “the light is fading - ah, the sun couldn't have
waited a little longer! but he's not waiting for anyone, not even us. 
It was dark when they reached Saint-Pierre. Night had sprung from
the harbor like a flood, the moon was up and the stars lit in the dark
thought blue above, but Pelee's Ridge still retained a touch of the
sun. One could have imagined the day standing there just before the flight
over that scorching ridge. Then, spreading wings west as the light left the
summit, leaving Martinique to night and the stars.   
All along the road to the Jardin des Plantes the large fireflies had
waltzed and drifted around them, they had heard the first quiver of the
night wind in the palm trees, they had stopped to listen, the night had said
things to them beyond the comprehension of everything except lovers
and 195 poets. The Creole French of the tropics still hold a veil between
their minds, but they understand each other perfectly.  
They came by sea, the harbor was full of stars and the anchor lights of
ships in the bay shone like glow worms, the red porthole of a steamboat
sent a wave of red light across the sea. 'water. They could hear the

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brushing of small waves against the steps of the sea, and from over there,
somewhere in the starlight, the “creaking” of the oars. 
A boat ashore was leaving a ship.
"Look," said Hubert, "over there, that light near the steamer is the
Belle  Arlésienne  ." He had told her on the way home how Wisdom had
advanced the expedition which was intended to begin on Friday. The news
had been a blow to her - a blow he couldn't guess, for in the darkness he
didn't see the tears in her eyes, nor the quivering of her lips.    
She looked across the water at the fateful light. It seemed grim to
her, a Zombie's  eye staring at her straight, cunning and threatening.   
“I am taking him,” said the light, “beyond the seashore; you've seen
ships go there, big ships turn into little ships, and then just spots that
disappear completely, just like people disappear when they
die. Remember Ti Finotte ; she passed away like that, and the sun remains,
the blue sea and the sky, but she hasn't come back - she'll never come
back. Yes, I'm taking her. I am the Zombie  who comes to take away
happiness. I changes its shape as do the Zombies  ; you saw me once
before, I was then the coffin in which they placed Ti Finotte there, in the
middle of the palms which blow from Morne Rouge, now I am the light
which will carry your love through the blown sea by the wind.            
She turned to Hubert and threw her arms around his 196 neck,
pressing her face against his chest - sobbing. She could keep a brave heart
when he told her he was leaving, she could hold back the words that
would tell her her despair, but she couldn't control her tears
anymore. Fate had spoken to him. This mind that knew nothing, knew
everything. Long ago, on the shores of the blue Caribbean sea, the women
of his distant ancestry had seen their men leave, never perhaps to return,
and had hugged them like that. Sorrow, which has no age, had thrown
them on the breasts of their lovers. Just as in her love she had resumed
their love, so in her grief she resumed their grief.       
There, near the starry port of Saint-Pierre, this daughter of the
people, clutching this man of the people, formed with him a picture that
the patient stars had watched for centuries. The story of love and
separation told by two forms clinging to each other - a sculptural, eternal
vision. 
"But I will be back - and it is not yet - not for a few days -"
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"You will come back?"

"Ah, believe me, nothing will stop me - nothing - nothing.
“It's so far - I don't know where. If I knew; but the ships are going
over there, and it's the distance that takes my heart; they merge into
nothing, pass in the sky.   
"But they came back - did you see the ships coming back?"
His voice told him that he was in trouble and that it was his grief that
was causing him trouble. She didn't know if the ships she had seen leaving
had ever returned, the sailing ships all looked like her. The American liner
returned, but he was different from the others, but the cloudiness in his
voice made her eyes dry and answered him.  
197  "Yes - I hadn't thought of that, don't mind I'm stupid - dear  , you
will surely come back." The Bon  Dié  will surely refer you to me.     
The boat that had rowed across the harbor was now at the steps
nearby, and a man was coming up the steps. It was Wisdom. He didn't
notice them as he walked away towards town, but they saw him clearly.  
Marie shuddered.
“Come on,” she said, “it's late, later than I've ever been, and the
house will be closed.
They turned, and through the passage Bertine looked for the rue du
precipice; there was not a soul to see, and moonlight was now pouring
into the city. 
Never had the old street looked more mysterious or more beautiful
than by this light, brilliant, but tinged with the suggestion of death, snow
and dreams. If you had seen Mary standing at the door of the house
where she lived and knocking at the entrance, dressed as she was in her
dress, light and graceful like an Athenian's dress, you could have imagined
yourself far from the world. of our time, in some street of Mycenae - a
moonlit street of Taormina from which the flautists had just disappeared,
leaving behind the silence and the vision of Amaryllis at her doorstep. 

198

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CHAPTER XXIX
THE SAILING OF LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE
At three o'clock on the fateful Friday morning, Hubert was awakened
from his sleep by a knock on his door.
It was his landlady, Man'm Faly . She had promised to wake him up at
three o'clock, for La Belle Arlésienne  would throw up her moorings and go
away at four, if there was enough wind. Suspicious of herself, the old lady
had not gone to bed.     
When he was dressed, she returned with a cup of coffee and a plate
with a sorrel on it. She had known many tenants: pals, French steamer
engineers, men of all nationalities, but she had never known one who
pleased her better than Hubert. He never growled and he always had a
kind word. Besides, she knew, as half Saint-Pierre knew, that Marie du
Morne Rouge had finally found her man, and that the man was
Hubert. The oldest woman in the world is not too old to be interested in a
love affair, and Man'm Faly was only sixty years old.    
She stayed nearby while he drank his coffee. He had paid her the
night before and her few things were packed in a canvas bag she had
found for him. 
“Ah! Well, the Good  Die  the  know, but we would not want you to
go. But you will come back, that's for sure.    
“Oh, yes, I will be back - you don't find such a city every day, nor such
people. But there are storms and chances… ” 
He took a package out of his pocket. It contained all the 199 money
he had left the payment he had received in the office of dispatch and the
dollars Wisdom had paid him for gold. Although he remembered the
prayers for Jaques and paid for them, he still had a quite respectable sum,
because living in Saint-Pierre was very cheap, and Marie had saved him
from the vices on which foolish sailors were wasting their money.   
“… And you never know what can happen. See here; there is money
in this package. It's for the little one, if anything happens to me. For Marie,
the one you saw with me yesterday.    
“I'll keep it,” Man'm Faly said .

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She took the package and he took her bag. He cast his eyes around
the room. It was naked and poorly furnished, but he had been happy
there; in all his wandering life he had never known such happiness; the
pure, simple and clean happiness of childhood.    
A minute later he was on the street.
Rue du Morne framed with its houses a glimpse of the sea, and the
upper half of a large moon flowing just beyond the sea line.
He had said goodbye to Marie the night before. Her heart was heavy
in him; it seemed to him now, as he walked down the steep street on the
harbor side, that he was leaving paradise and leaving it forever. The
colorful town of Saint-Pierre, the nice people, the easy life - where in the
world would he find a town like this?   
And Marie ... 
He was now standing on the platform near the steps. These were the
stages where he had told the boat to meet him at dawn. It was almost
due, for the moon had now completely sunk, and in an instant Pelee
would be silhouetted against the freezing blue sky of dawn. The
wind 200 was weak, just a breath of air. There, beyond the shelter of the
island, the trades of the southeast would blow, but here there was barely
enough wind to move a ship through the water.     
Listening to the movement of the waves against the steps, he heard
the constant creaking of the oars. It was La Belle  Arlésienne's  boat .   
* * * * *    

At four o'clock, Marie left the house in the rue du Précipice. It wasn't
a working day with her. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after
tomorrow - all the time was in front of her to work. Today, the saddest
day of his life, would be a public holiday.  
As she climbed slowly into the waking city, she heard the heavy
shutters open, voices, a rooster crowing from afar somewhere towards
rue Buonaparte.
This morning, in the blue sky of dawn, the crest of Mont Pelée,
already touched by the rays of the sun, was an extraordinary sight. The
cloudy turban, tormented by a higher breeze of air, flowed upward in
tongues of misty light; the great mountain seemed to be set ablaze - one

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might have imagined it surmounted by a burning cresset , some traffic

light lit by giants or gods.  
She reached rue Vauclin . It was already almost daylight and the road
was filled with people going to work. From the rue Victor Hugo below the
Creole cries of the street vendors were already resounding; people gave
him good in the excess , and she answered them and continued.   
Five more minutes brought her to the road to Morne Rouge. There
she paused and, leaning against the wall on the side of the road on the sea
side, looked down. 
201  She was watching a spectacle that many people would have
crossed the world to see - St. Peter's Bay unfolding on the most beautiful
morning that ever came from heaven. She only saw La Belle  Arlésienne  .   
The old boat had shaken her canvas and, in the strengthening breeze,
she flew out to sea like a thief. The bay was still mid-twilight , although
beyond the bay the sea was alive with the sun. 
One might have thought for a moment that La Belle Arlésienne
was  not moving; a moment longer, and you would have seen the distance
widening between her and the liner anchored to starboard of her.   
The girl shaded her eyes with both hands; then she threw up her
arms as if to hold some figure in the air which left her; then, leaning
against the wall, she looked.  
As the day grew stronger , the vision of La Belle Arlésienne  became
more distant.  
An infinite distance seemed to attract him, slowly, almost
imperceptibly; now a ship, now a small boat, now a spot disappearing in
the glare of the sun above the azure. 

202
CHAPTER XXX
PEDRO
Hubert, leaning on the taffrail , watched Martinique wither away
under the sun and the dazzling sea. Dominica, to the east, stood vague
and ghostly on the horizon; to the west, the sea only showed the purple of

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an infinite thought, an ocean of Saint-Estèphe or Macon blazing in the

fiercest light of the tropics.  
Wisdom stood next to the negro who was driving, and La Belle
Arlésienne  was heading neither “nor” west on a road that would lead her
west of St. Kitts and beyond the Virgin Islands. Here, Wisdom would run a
west-northwest course. It would be a quicker pass than to come, because
they now had the South Equatorial Current with them.    
Hubert, as he turned away from the taffrail , heard Wisdom give an
order for the hands to Lee's hugs. They were now beyond the shelter of
the island, and the constant blow of the trades gently bent  La
Belle  Arlésienne  , as if a large hand was playing with her. "Now I'm going
to capsize you," sighed the voice to which the hand belonged, speaking
with a deep hum through the taut, trembling rigging, as Beauty  bowed
like an old coquette at the slight pressure, until which, with a
whimper from the rudder and a hint of sparkling spray, she would
remember for herself and come up with a more even keel.        
Hubert had noticed the crew when the number 203 came on
board; besides Wisdom and Julius, there were ten hands, all negroes, tall,
well-trained men, well prepared for the hard work that awaited them,
with the exception of one, an undersized individual, with crazy eyes and
look down on Puerto Rico.  
"Ten," said Hubert to himself, counting them . “With Sagesse and
Jules it's twelve, and with me thirteen. Thirteen, and we're starting on a
Friday, and we're waiting for luck!  
“ Look  , ” Wisdom said, going up beside him and indicating the
crew. “They're not bad at all; everything except this Puerto Rican - he's
new to me and doesn't know our ways. We will make him a better man
before the trip is over. Watch how Jules handles them.      
After Sagesse, Jules was the dominant spirit on board
the barquentine . He had never had to repeat an order, and he was a man
much more after the heart of Hubert than Sagesse; yet he was tainted
with Wisdom and, evidently, his slave.  
There was only one other person on board beside Hubert who did not
bend completely under the eyes of the formidable captain, it was the
Puerto Rican. This fellow obeyed orders in a surly manner, and Wisdom
looked at him sullenly. 
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"We'll make him a better man before the trip is over," he said again,
turning away from the hands that were being returned and standing for a
moment staring in the breeze at Dominica's blue ghost.
Hubert said nothing.
He didn't even notice the unlucky crew number. He had imbibed the
teaching of M. Seguin about Wisdom, and he felt that in this journey, so
filled as it was with the possibilities of wealth, things could happen of a
disastrous nature, and that silence and vigilance 204 were essential. He
did not know in the least that Sagesse, under the illusion that his plans
had been betrayed to M. Séguin, had sworn to be on par with him
(Hubert). He didn't know, but something warned him to shut up, as civil as
possible with this extraordinary man, and on the lookout. That day, in fact,
began a duel of intelligence between these two men, the end of which no
one could foresee according to the nature of the men themselves.     
The expedition had been so rushed that Wisdom felt unsatisfied in
her mind about the stowage and condition of some of the most important
equipment. The boring diving gowns, pumps, tubes and instruments were
therefore brought onto the deck after dinner from the lockers where they
had been stored. 
Wisdom, who knew a little of everything, and whose natural genius
and common sense provided the most gaps in his knowledge, had the
pump and each greased part, thick and wrapped in canvas,
dismantled; the metal parts of the diving dresses were treated with the
same care, but in a different way; the dresses themselves, the air tubes, all
the material down to the smallest detail gradually came under his close
inspection and received as much attention as possible to protect him from
the influence of the sea air and tropical rot that affects
everything. metal to morals.  
At eight bells (four o'clock), Hubert, who had retired to his bunk to
doze off, was awakened by a cry from the bridge. He had left his cabin
door wide open and the deckhouse door also open, he could see the
sunny white deck, the figure of Wisdom, the faces of several of the crew
and something lying on the deck ahead. Wisdom. He fell from his bunk
and crossed the deckhouse in the sun.  
205  Wisdom had a belay pin in his hand, and the thing in front of him
on the bridge was Puerto Rico, Pedro.

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The man was covered in blood from a wound on his forehead. He was
just getting up with one hand when Hubert entered the scene, and he
looked dizzy, like a person waking up from his sleep. The next moment he
got to his feet, literally struck by Wisdom, and walked over to the fo'cs'le ,
where he disappeared, followed by a burst of laughter from the men on
deck.  
"That'll teach him," said the captain, throwing the belay pin into the
scupper and wiping his forehead with his sleeve; then, turning round, he
saw Hubert and jumped slightly. His face had an expression of cold
ferocity quite new to Hubert; it was as if the devil in man had taken hold
of his features for a moment - only an instant, for the next day he was
laughing and himself again.   
"Bah!" he said. “I think the scamp made me lose my temper. He
approached the weather rail, covered his eyes and looked at the
sea. Dominica had disappeared, painted by the distance; a star of light on
the distant horizon indicated the top sails of a ship's hull beyond the sea
line; nothing else was to be seen.      
“We won't see any more land until we touch the Virgins,” said
Wisdom. - From there to your island, my friend  Hubert, there are, as close
as I can get, three hundred and sixty miles; from here to Virgos is a
question of two hundred and ninety, so you can add the sums together,
and you will know the length of your way.    
"What do we do?"
"Eight knots."
"When will we get there?"
" Good  God  , how do you speak!" We are in the hands of the
wind. "   
206  Hubert filled his pipe and lit it, Sagesse, leaning against the
ramparts, lit a Martinique fight  and, hands in his pockets, looked lazily at
the sea.   
"See here," said Hubert after a moment of silence. "Suppose we
reach this place correctly, and suppose we find stuff there…" 
"Yes?"
“Well, how do we get rid of it?”
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Wisdom laughs.
“You are one of those who look far ahead. Me too. Suppose we find
some stuff there, well, who owns it besides us? We located it, we
organized an expedition to find it, the island is not owned by any
government, things belonged to people who were dead when you and I
were born. The stuff is ours. Is not it true?    
"As you say, yes."
“Well, my friend, there is no law in this world. As soon as we know
that we have found the old piggy bank, that we have opened it and we
have taken the contributions, a government will say: `` This island is mine
'', a man will rise up with a deceptive charter , proving that he bought the
island and the boat years ago, a naughty thing will be played by a rascal,
and we will have legal proceedings; the stuff will be impounded, witnesses
will be brought from the end of the world to testify to false testimonies,
our characters will be questioned about… ”Wisdom laughed while
speaking, crossed the bridge to the leeward railing, spat in the sea
and came back. "They will say, these jurists, who is this Mr. Wisdom who
finds old treasures?" Let's stalk all around him, and if we can't find
anything against him, let's do something about him. No my friend, I don't
want anything to do with the law; nothing to do with
governments; nothing to do with the enemies on this
occasion. So , 207 being a man looking to the future, I've already made my
plans to get rid of it in America… ”Wisdom stopped dead. His habit of
talking had taken hold of him and carried him farther than he wanted to
go.           
"In America?"
"There, or elsewhere."
At this moment Jules left the fo'cs'le , where only a few minutes
before Pedro had disappeared, and arrived on the bridge for Wisdom. He
said a few words in a low voice, and Wisdom following him, they both
moved forward. 
Hubert watched them disappear through the fo'cs'le's hatch . The
thought that Pedro had been badly hurt crossed his mind for a moment,
but his mind, filled with words of Wisdom, had no place to think of
Pedro. America! If they had to go to America to dispose of the goods, the
journey could last months, and to Hubert the few hours that had passed
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since the loss of Martinique seemed months. He had found everything he

wanted in life, and he had left it behind in Martinique.    
While waiting for Wisdom to return and finish the conversation, he
saw Marie again as he saw her that day on the cliffs of Grande Anse, the
sea wind fluttering on her dress and the sun clutching her little head
between her two big ones. golden. hands .
Then Wisdom appeared, coming back from the camp , but he
didn't seem in the mood to continue the conversation.
He seemed confused in his mind about something.

208
CHAPTER XXXI
IN FORT DE FRANCE, AY, HO!
That night, while Hubert was on deck, smoking a pipe before turning
around, he heard the laughter coming from far ahead.
There was no light on the deck but the light from the cockpit lamp
and a glow from a crack in the deckhouse door which was closed, and
from the darkness far ahead came this sudden shock. to laugh, not loud,
but hard, without joy. and inhuman.
If a demon had fallen from the sky and trod the bowsprit, he could
have given such laughter from La Belle  Arlésienne  , her captain, her crew
and her adventure before putting his withering on the ship and throwing
himself into the sea. sea.  
Hubert glanced at the helmsman. He was a stout negro, naked to his
waist in the hot night, a colossal figure touched by the light from the
cabin. If he heard or if he did not hear, it was impossible to say; he showed
no sign or movement, except the movement of the large right hand on the
spoke of the wheel, now visible, now fleeting in the darkness.   
" Pardieu!  Hubert whispered to himself , " the guy who made that
laugh wouldn't make the nicest companion." Let's listen… ”    
He leaned on the rampart.
The warm south-easterly trade wind emerging from the
velvety muffle, the darkness whispered in the shrouds and made the
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points of the reef vibrate; the hot, windy, starry night had a scent more
than the scent of the sea; traces of scent from the gardens and forests of
Dominica, hints of Guadeloupe spices clinging to the wind's skirts.   
Then all of a sudden the voice came forward, not laughing this time.
In Fort de France, Ay ho!
In Fort de France, Ay ho!
Hello  Doudoux  , Ay ho!
In Fort de France.
In Fort de France  ,
Ay ho!

The fate of the negroes when they smashed the cargo of La Belle
Arlésienne  sung by that single cracked voice. Now, the negro sailor, or the
white, for that matter, never sings a work song for the sake of the
thing. Who was it, smashing imaginary cargo or stepping on the capstan
bars of a visionary vessel?    
The deckhouse door opened and a burst of light flooded the deck.
Wisdom remained framed in the doorway for a moment. He seemed
to be listening to the voice from the front; then he saw Hubert and called
him to enter the deckhouse.  
A case of rum was placed on the table, two glasses and a pitcher of
water; one of the glasses contained rum. Wisdom had obviously been
drinking on her own. Her face had a gray tint; something had obviously
bothered him.    
He closed the door, filled a glass for Hubert, put a box of cigars on the
table, all without a word; then he took 210 his seat at the table and began
to talk of the trip to the disjointed manner of a man who wants to make
conversation.  
From time to time, while he was speaking, he would stop, as if to
listen. Now there was nothing to hear but the voice of the ship, the
creaking of the block and the candlestick, the hundred little tongues in
which the ship speaks. Then, thin and distant, the other voice would
come:  
In Fort de France, Ay ho!

thin , tired, the ghost of a sound.

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Hubert now knew all of a sudden, like Sagesse, that the singer was
Pedro, that the man was raving, probably dying.
But he didn't say anything. Pedro, what he had seen of him, was a
scoundrel who looked like a hanged man; he didn't feel very interested in
his fate, although he hated the idea of being brutally hit. What absorbed
his attention now was the Wisdom way.   
The captain had filled his glass, finished it and refilled it; he spoke
incessantly, and the conversation seemed to intoxicate him as much as the
rum; the more intoxicated he was, the less he cared about the issue on his
mind.  
Then, finally, he got up and pushed the deckhouse door open to the
air. He stood in the doorway for a moment, as if listening; but there was
nothing to hear, for the voice had ceased.  

211
CHAPTER XXXII
THE FO'CS'LE
The next day, Wisdom showed no sign of her drunkenness from the
night before or of the worry that had preceded it. The bridge didn't show
any sign of Pedro either. 
Was the man dead or was he lying in his hammock, recovering from
his injuries? It was impossible to say; the faces of the crew said nothing.  
The weather was perfect, blue and warm, and La
Belle  Arlésienne  , with every linen cloth put on, was making good
progress.  
If a ship could develop a character, one could have imagined La Belle
Arlésienne  infected by the character of Wisdom; at least it seemed so to
Hubert. There was something stealthy and almost devious about this old
ocean tramp. He could remember, the first day he saw her hull on the
horizon, how she had grown up on the skyline, how she had come to him
as he lay adrift in the boat open like an angel in the sky. her help, and
then, the light and the wind dying with the sunset, as she had suddenly
seemed to forget.     

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How she had vanished into the darkness for a moment, then came to
fly in the starlight.
It was sixty years old and over, built in Havannah in the early
1940s; age was against it, and perhaps it was the touch of age, added to
the cut of its ill-fitting sails and some tendency in its construction, that
gave it the 212 distinction over others. ships. Who knows? But the fact
remains that she was a "character", picturesque in any port in the world,
and romantic with a suggestion of wickedness and deceit.    
But today she moved with a freedom and a youth, as if she was
rejoicing in the bottom of her old heart about the business at hand.
At eight bells, four o'clock, there was still no sign of Pedro on the
bridge, nor any news from him. Wisdom was nowhere to be found, the
deckhouse door was closed, and Hubert resolved with a daring blow. 
He needs to verify his suspicions. If Pedro had been killed by Wisdom,
it was important for him to have first-hand knowledge of the fact, which
would be a weapon against this villain if he got him in trouble in the
future. 
He stepped forward, passing the green painted bell which one of the
crew had just struck the hour.
Several of the hands were on the bridge, but not Jules. This man,
although a journeyman and had sufficient navigational knowledge to work
on the ship, docked in the fo'cs'le with the others. There was no doubt.  
Now, the body of a ship is sacred to the hands. The officers of the
ship rarely enter and only on extraordinary occasions. Hubert knew this
fact, but the knowledge did not discourage him.  
He walked over to the hatch of the child , and descended the ladder
in the darkness and a stifling atmosphere.
It was a fairly spacious place, as the fo'cs'les go, and considering the
tonnage of La Belle  Arlésienne  , but all the winds in the sky could never
have purged it of the smell of beetles and negroes. The slush lamps
that had lit it for sixty years, the tobacco, from Perique to twist, which had
been smoked there, the men, from Dagoes to the Africans , 213 who had
lived there, everything had left a reminiscence, a stain , almost you could
say a color.    

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Bunks lined the sides; there was only one hammock, it belonged to

Jules; a single marine chest, Jules; the rest of the crew didn't care much
about the luggage - a knotted handkerchief or an old fish mat serving as
bags and chests. The bunks ran to where the bowsprit heel came in place
between the knights.    
There were five men here, all asleep; Jules in his hammock and the
other four berths; naked, for they had taken off the last of their clothes in
the stifling heat; and looking like bronze figures cast by a fantastic
sculptor, fresh out of the mold, and thrown here and there to cool off.   
Pedro was not there.
Hubert carefully verified the fact. The man must have died in the
night and been thrown overboard like a dog. There could be no doubt
about the fact, because on La Belle Arlésienne  there was no other place he
could be than here, unless he was stowed away in the galley, in
the caboose , in the harness or shot down the main hatch. Overboard was
a much more tenable guess. The thing had probably been done before
dawn, and as Hubert recognized the fact and looked around at those
sinister silhouettes lost in sleep, his own position on board, if anything put
him in opposition to Wisdom, came to him with shine.      
Without clothes, naked and barbarian, lit by the faint rays of the
swaying lamp, here are the men who would give him short and a dip in the
sea at their commander's word. Pedro was one of them, but they had not
opposed his assassination. 
As he watched, a man in one of the starboard bunks shook his arms
and stirred in his sleep. Hubert did not wait. A moment later he was on
the bridge. It had been 214 lucky; the cook who had been in
the caboose had not left him, the men on the deck, all except the man
behind the wheel, were lazing in the afternoon sun. Three of them were
seated with their backs to the aft part of the main hatch, chewing tobacco
and gardening; he could see the top of their heads and hear their lace-
and-lace voices, their laughter, and the occasional oath; two were leaning
over the leeward side of the ship, gushing and spitting into the sea.        
The deckhouse door was still closed. There was no lookout forward,
the individual who should have been the ship's eyes was leaning over the
leeward rail. 

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The discipline in this regard was rather lax aboard La

Belle  Arlésienne  . She took risks in good weather; very often she appeared
blind, but she found her way, rarely making a big mistake. Hubert
imagined that the crew of this blind and easygoing vessel were
not paying attention and that their expedition into the fo'cs'le had gone
unnoticed. In this , he was wrong.      

215
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE REVOLVER
Three days later, in a pink and pearly dawn, they passed the Virgin
Islands, their banks and their arrows of sand.
At eight o'clock the islands were no more than palm trees by the sea,
swimming in an azure haze; they were completely gone before noon. 
Not a word had been said by Wisdom about Pedro, and Hubert
imagined that the captain was retaining the subject under the impression
that he (Hubert) had forgotten the existence of Puerto Rico.
There was something almost strange about the disappearance of a
man and the total indifference of everyone on board. The imagination
embroidered on the situation and asked questions no less disturbing
because without answer. 
Had the wretch died in his bunk, delirious with cerebral fever from
the injury, or had he been thrown overboard before death?
Hubert's imaginative mind found a lot to play with this idea. He
pictured business done in the wee hours of the morning while he was
asleep. He dreamed of it at night.  
Pedro became an obsession for him, just as the dead Jaques had
become an obsession on the island. What happened to this man he saw
alive and well, but left the ship without a word? 
He knew  that Pedro had been killed by the blow of the 216 belay pin,
just as on the island he had known that Jaques had died among the
bushes; but the imagination scarcely takes into account the facts once it
takes the reins, and it is endlessly haunted by the idea of the missing

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man; the chanty he had sung in his delirium clung like a ghostly echo to

the ship.     
This disturbance of the imagination was not alleviated by the
conditions of his life on board, the absolute laziness and the presence at
all times of Wisdom. He quickly changed from aversion to hatred of
Wisdom. 
On this day of their visit to the Virgin Islands, his bad temper and
irritability had gone into crisis, and it was only by moving away from his
mate that he could keep himself in check. He had been silent at breakfast,
but the captain didn't seem to notice his silence. All morning he had kept
as much as possible to himself, smoking, leaning to the side, watching the
indigo blue waters swirl, the foam flakes, the flying fish, the sun shining,
the floating seaweed. There were small fish after La
Belle  Arlésienne  near the rudder, as if to protect themselves; sometimes
they would move away from the ship and come back, brilliant and swift. A
glowing blue and gold shape appeared and hovered for a moment in
sight; below appeared what seemed to be the trace of a spit of sand,
vague, hazy and moving as if to follow the rhythm of the ship. It was a
shark, and the blue and gold angel of the sea was its pilot. They
disappeared. Sharks don't follow Negro ships, they say. Hubert didn't
know or didn't care; he gazed at the depths like a hypnotized man, seeing,
barely seeing, not caring what he was seeing. He thought of Marie, Marie
du Morne Rouge, from whom this cursed boat took him further and
further and against his will.             
217  He was brought back from his thoughts by a sound of the bell
and by the shadow of the cook with the dinner from the kitchen to the
deckhouse.
Canned beef cooked with carrots formed the meal, along with the
perennial bananas from the tropics. Wisdom was hungry, therefore
silent. Hubert was silent, but he was not hungry.  
The sight of this man, whom he was beginning to hate, at his food
would have taken his appetite away if he had had one. The meal took
place in silence, and Sagesse was pushing his plate away, and had reached
out for the bottle to fill his glass, when Hubert leaned across the table. 
“I counted the crew when I got on board,” said Hubert, “and it seems
to me that I made a mistake.

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"How? 'Or' What?" asked Wisdom, using the bottle. 

“I counted eleven hands which, with you and me, would make
thirteen souls on board.
"Well," said Wisdom, helping herself to the glass, "what about that?"
"Thirteen was an unlucky number."
"So you believe in this nonsense?"
"Is not it?"
"No."
"Well, look - what's happened since we started?"
"Nothing that I know of."
"Thought!"
Hubert worked, impulse and imagination imposed a hand on him; he
forgot security, he forgot Marie, he forgot himself in the anger of his soul
before this villain with the smooth face, this cold calculator of chances,
this murderer with the soul of a storekeeper. 
218  “Think about it! - a man has already been lost off this ship.
"Indeed?" said Wisdom, her hand falling from her glass into her coat
pocket. 
“Murdered, mordieu  ! said the other, who was now white on the
lips.   
The next moment he threw himself on the table. It wasn't a second
too early. Sagesse had taken a revolver from his pocket; it was a stupid act
and different from him, but his strange character, so antagonistic in
general to anger and violence, had become infected with the rage of his
counterpart; he felt perhaps that Hubert, by surprising his act, now had a
hold on him, that the crew, bent over by his will as they were, was going, if
he was brought before one of those infernal judges. of instruction,
inevitably collapse, contradict and give it away. Anger, high in his mind for
a second, dictated the attempt to destroy this witness. But Hubert was too
fast for him. He had grabbed him by the wrist with an iron handle, the
muzzle of the gun pointing towards the roof of the deckhouse. It all
happened in a flash, with barely a sound, and if you had looked out the
door you would have imagined that the two men were crying. But a
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second glance would have shown you that Hubert, half lying on the table,
had grasped a knife in his left hand.          
- Let him go, said Hubert, or blood-  God  , I'll shove it in your heart,
murderer!  
Wisdom, whose anger had vanished, released her grip on the
gun. She fell on the table, and Hubert, the striking, took his place. 
Wisdom, rising from hers, walked quietly to the half-open door,
closed it and turned to her companion.
“We are fools,” he said. "Sit down. I'm not approaching you. But
arguing like that, we're fools!   
219  “I might be an idiot, but I'm not a murderer.
Wisdom pointed to the knife that had fallen on the table and laughed
as she resumed her place.
"Maybe not, but it looks to me like you were pretty good with that
knife a moment ago." I didn't say you were a fool alone; I said we were
fools arguing in the afterguard, with a crew like this and a treasure in front
of us. The good  Lord  only knows if we may not be fighting together for
our lives soon, if we are lucky and if these pet peeves choose to rise up
against us. Do you know that my position here is not so much that of ship
master as it is of menagerie master? You got the better of me for a while. I
didn't mean to shoot you. I drew in anger, I gave in for a second to this
child's passion. It was a flaw, but I got it under control. But suppose - are
you looking here - suppose one of these animals came in and found us
grappling, and you're holding me like that, where would my authority
have been? And, I tell you, it is only by authority that you and I will live
through this matter, for the companions forward have hell in them, and
they only want to sting to let it out.           
“You say a man has gone too far. Now, that's my business, and better
for a man to go than to have his throat slit. This man was full of mutiny,
and I sent him where he needed to go sooner or later. It's my
business. And now give me that gun. Or stay… ”He went to his cabin and
returned in an instant with another gun. He handed it to Hubert.      
"He's charged. I brought it to you in case we had any problems with
these comrades. You can take it now and give me mine back.  

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Hubert opened the breech. It was loaded. He returned the Wisdom

weapon to her, and Wisdom put it in his pocket.  
220  “Now,” said Wisdom, “let's be friends until this matter is
over. That is, let's work together, because if we don't, we won't get
anything out of the fire - and I can tell you, we have our work cut out for
us. 
He held out his hand, and Hubert took it; but there was no friendship
in the hands, only politics. 

221
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE VISION OF THE TREASURE
Since that day, the way of Wisdom has changed. One might have
imagined that the nature of man had changed; a friendliness and
bonhomie never before manifested in his tone and conversation. The
simple and somewhat primitive mind of Hubert rejected the first openings
towards this better understanding; he suspected treason; but the captain's
manner was so uniformly equal and sustained that the primitive mind
could not but fall under its spell.     
No man could act like that in friendship and go on playing, thought
Hubert; and in that he was perhaps right. Wisdom had the power to close
a door to all kinds of passions and hang up the key; just like a hotel visitor
hangs up their room key, forgetting it; or rather, clearing it of his mind
until the day's business is done, he remembers the key and walks into his
room.    
At night, in rum and water, smoking Martinican cigars, without a coat,
sitting at the table in shirt sleeves like the prosperous owner of a
Provencal inn, Sagesse gave free rein to his language and his
imagination. Treasure now was almost his entire theme. 
“Notice,” he said, “I have been trading in these waters for thirty years
and more now, and this is the first treasure ship business that I have
embarked upon, as this is the first time I see the chance of profit. Yes
I 222 had hundreds of rascals and idiots coming to me with
"pitches". Mordieu  , I asked  men to bring me `` places '' in five hundred
fathoms of water, in canals where any fool would know that the rising tide
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makes work impossible, on reefs that a child could guess would see a ship
separate in six months - but here we have a perfectly new thing, a ship
lying in a few fathoms of calm water, safely hidden from us. Sure, she
might have been visited and sent back years ago, but I don't think so.       
"Why not?"
“For this reason: if she is Serpente's ship, she has been lying there for
many years, underwater all the time, with water deep enough to avoid
being rescued unless she is. have a diving device, and they didn't have a
diving device handy at the time. . If people had attacked it recently, they
would have blown it up. She wouldn't be lying there so quietly, believe
me, if the Americans or the Spaniards had scented her.  
"Do you think she really is Serpente's ship?"
"I do."
“Do you think he was really a man like what Monsieur Jaques said?
"Why not?"
“My faith!  why … if he was like what Mr. Jaques said, he wouldn't
have been like any other man. 
"What he was," replied Wisdom. “Now look at yourself here. You can
listen to old wives' tales on time and get no profit from them, but when
you have an old wife's tale repeat and repeat, and always the same, you
can pretend there is some truth . The stories and images of
Serpente agree  - why mordieu  , you yourself have seen her skull, I hope to
find and keep as a curiosity.       
“As for me,” said Hubert, “I never want to see the 223 thing again. I
don't care what you say about old wives' tales, but I believe this, that
Serpente was the devil in the form of a man ...  
“Or a child,” Sagesse laughs, “or a monkey, because he wasn't taller -
in his helmet, anyway.
"... monkey or child or man, what I said, I said. He was the devil, or as
much of himself as the devil could cram into such a carcass, and if he lets
us leave this island with gold, all I can say is that the devil is dead or
ceased to operate. 
Wisdom laughed, lit another cigar and turned the subject. He felt a
deep contempt for Hubert's superstition, but he did not show it. 
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On the morning of the seventh day, he approached Hubert, who was

seated on the main hatch, sat down beside him and unrolled a small map.
"We should be here tomorrow, shortly after sunrise, if that wind
holds up," Wisdom said, spreading the map over her knee. “I got that from
Jaques; it's a map of the French Admiralty over the Turks and Caicos
Islands, at least a little; the whole thing was as big as a blanket and I cut
this piece out. The Diane  - it was a French cruiser - understood our island
when it was here ten years ago to conduct surveys. Little did she think
how useful it would be to us.       
Hubert looked at the graph. There was the island, no bigger than a
sixpence, the reefs and shoals all carefully mapped out. It gave him a
strange feeling to see this image of the place which for him had the
mystery of the land of dreams attached; there were times when he half-
believed that the island was nonexistent and that La
Belle  Arlésienne  , sailing the blue sea as far as she could, would never lift
that landing. Yet it was here 224 photographed by men who had visited
the place ten years before it landed there.       
He had waited there all these years to show her the meaning of
desolation and death, as the little Place de la Fontaine was waiting for him
to show him Love.
Ah! these places that await us since our birth! the places where we
split up and meet the people we love, the place where we will lie down to
die! - we never count them among our friends and enemies; but which
friends are more faithful, which enemies are more inexorable?   
He looked intently at the small picture. A hair's past the southern
edge, he knew that Jaques' body lay in the midst of the cedar laurel
bushes, in the middle, there, the Serpente bones, just beyond the
northern edge, the patient coral ship. in the green lagoon; that tiny spur to
the south was where he was standing when he first smelled the haunting
"dirt", and from there he had swam to the boat. The gulls still flew over
these reefs to the southeast, calling to roll, to fish.    
“Everything is clear to the west,” said Sagesse. “Ten fathoms near the
shore; we can anchor there; sandy beach, you told me it was, south - are
you sure?   
“ My God!  Sure! If you had been there, like me, you would be
sure. He had become so friendly with Wisdom in the last few days that he
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could talk to her about intimate things, and with southern vehemence he
began to quickly paint in words the horror of this time, lost, locked by the
sea in this place. where the wind and the sun and the silence were
conspirators of madness.     
225  Sagesse listened, and never did a man seem more friendly and
interested than Captain Pierre Sagesse, seated in the main hatch of La
Belle  Arlésienne  , listening to the tale of the man whom he had sworn in
his heart to take revenge; but not by the brutal methods of ordinary
revenge that would have satisfied an ordinary man.   
That night, Hubert did not join Sagesse in his rum and his water; he
smoked his pipe on the bridge. The moon would not rise until after
midnight, and although the stars were clear, they had become
insignificant by the sea. La Belle Arlésienne  seemed to be sailing through
an ocean of liquid phosphorus. The sea burned white, glowed faintly in the
distance like a snow-covered country, glistened on the side of a boat and
smoked furiously in the wake; it was the light of dead wood, the fires of
corpses, rotten things, gloomy like the light of Dante's lake where the
spirits of the damned dwell.      
At ten o'clock, Hubert went to his bunk; Wisdom, with the prospect of
a hard day's work the next day, was already in hers and snoring. The
bridge was in charge of Jules.  
For a long time, Hubert could not sleep, haunted by thoughts of the
next day. Despite his hatred of the island and his half-formed resolve not
to have a share in the treasure, the treasure had already laid ghostly
hands on him. No man can resist the fascination of the near presence of
free gold. Men can be cold with women, with wine, with sin, but
the hidden gold to be had for discovery is a magnet for all  men, as it was
for Hubert. He had been thinking about it all day, and now, as he was lying
on his bunk, it was driving sleep away; that made him forget Marie.       
It would seem that this fatal island has the power of 226 driving him
out of its way. Here, for the gold in the belt, he had forgotten his fraternity
with Jaques, here for the gold in the boat, he forgot his love for the
woman who loved him.  
A week ago he had no thought for the treasure; four days ago he had
hardly thought of it; yesterday he began to haunt his dreams; tonight he

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was holding it in his hands. The closer they got to it, the more the
attraction grew.    
As he lay in his bunk, he saw sacks the size of corn sacks overflowing
with wrasse; he saw jewelry such as he had seen in the windows of
Marseille; he saw wealth, not as a power to be used, but in its raw form of
wealth. And this is how Serpente saw it, and all those evil pirates, who,
unable to use gold except in a tavern or a hell game, sacked the
Caribbean, killed men and, with the wealth of India in their pockets, found
peace. finally in a noose.   
He fell asleep, only to dream of gold, and he woke up shortly before
dawn with a dry mouth and a burning forehead.
He came to the bridge. Wisdom had relieved Jules and was standing
next to the man behind the wheel. The moon, in its last quarter, held the
sea; it was low on the horizon and the stars above were bright and
immense; the wind had died down to a gentle breath, just filling the sails
that occasionally flattened with a noise like the wing of a large bird.    
Hubert spoke a word to Sagesse, then stepped forward a little and
leaned on the starboard bulwarks. He lit a pipe. The slowness of the boat
irritated him. What if the wind drops to dead calm? It seemed almost
impossible that this is the man who fled 227 place he now can not wait to
meet the man who had tried to dissuade Wisdom of the company that
now filled his being of fire and anguish.     
He leaned over for a moment, smoking, motionless, in a reverie; then,
as if he had suddenly woken up to an unpleasant fact, he jumped up and
slapped his hand on the rampart. 
"Fifteen percent.! Fifteen francs out of a hundred francs! Naughty
fate!  Never ! He thought he had tied me up with Jaques for fear of the
law. Well Pedro? It seems to me that if he threatens me with Jaques, I can
Threaten him with Pedro, and a ship company to testify! Fifty percent! I'll
stick to that. But I won't say anything yet.          
Now, in the sky to the east, the darkness was fading and the stars
that shone bright a moment ago were gone.
Some atmospheric influence had caught the faint first rays of the sun
and kept them from spreading in a fan-shaped haze, gray, then spreading
to blue, fiery luminous. Almost before one could say, "It is no longer the
night", the day came over the sea like a golden breeze. 
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“Land ho! Ahoy ! Ah! Land ho!   

Thin , in French for the colonies, came the cry of the maintop , where
Sagesse had placed a hand.
Hubert leaped onto the rampart and, clinging to the rat lines of the
mainmast with one hand, covered his eyes with the other and looked.
La Belle Arlésienne  was now heading NNW, and there, far on the
skyline, drawn as with a fine brush, the palm trees of Skeleton Island
caught his eye. The beach would be visible from the top, but from here
you could still only see the trees.  
Hubert, watching him, could hear the voice of Wisdom 228 giving
orders, rattling the chains of the rudder and the palms swaying slowly out
of sight as the ship changed course and jib and the foresail obscuring. 
He plopped down on the deck.
"Well, Wisdom said amount, La Belle Arlésienne  is not late for an
appointment  - you  . She knows her way, La  Belle  says . We'll be at our
anchorage in an hour, then it'll be hard work  , my good boy, for you and
me. Come on, let's have breakfast. We will have little time for meals once
the anchorage is lowered, as I intend to cross the boat and the equipment
to this island at sunset; so tomorrow morning the real business will
begin.               
They walked into the deckhouse, where the cook was already setting
the table, and were soon seated opposite each other in front of a plate of
fried bananas with bacon and a can of hot coffee.
They talked while eating and laughed. Wisdom, in the greatest spirit,
sketched out his plan of campaign, and Hubert could not but admire the
thoroughness of the man, for he had not forgotten anything and had
thought of the whole affair down to the smallest detail. Not only did a
boat have to be fetched across the island to the lagoon and the pump and
equipment to be secured in the boat, but a shelter had to be built in which
to keep the diving gowns and the perishable rubber connections of the
boat. sun when it was not. used .  
"You see," said Wisdom, "this can be a work of weeks, and we have
land enough food to the task force immediately in order not to travel to
the ship. There is the 'water, you say? 
“Yes, there is a source.
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"You told me you left a tent."

"A sailing boat that we made a tent."
"It will do."
229  "Listen!" said Hubert, suddenly turning his head and half rising. 
Through the open door of the deckhouse, thin, weak, distant, came a
lamentable noise.
It was the cry of the seagulls.
The men got up from the table and walked out onto the deck.

230
CHAPTER XXXV
LANDING
The island, beside them now and on the starboard bow, lay a
scorching coral white and sage green over the blue sea.
You could see the palms bending in the breeze, and the snow of the
waves and the white glitter of the seagulls, whose voices came, from time
to time, weak and spiritual, through the water.
Something floating under the palms caught Hubert's attention; he
borrowed the Wisdom glass and looked. These were the remains of the
tent, a few rags of canvas; they seemed to beckon him like brown hands,
thin and sinister.   
As he watched, the roar of the anchor chain through the hawse pipe
tore the air, and La Belle Arlésienne  swayed at her moorings in eight
fathoms of water a few cable lengths from shore.  
The barquentine had barely entered with a sound, but hardly had she
taken anchor when Babel burst on board. Jules' voice was heard above the
others, ordering the boats to be prepared; provisions were brought on
deck, while Sagesse, silent beside Hubert, gazed sullenly at the
preparations for the landing, issuing an order from time to time.  
The rowboat and a quarterboat were lowered and loaded with
provisions and diving equipment; it was almost an hour before the case is

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over and Wisdom and 231 his companion, taking place at the stern of the
boat, was free of La Belle Arlésienne  and headed for shore.    
They rowed to the south beach.
“I'm going to take the quarterboat across the island,” Sagesse said. “It
will be a bit of a job, but it's light enough, and eight of the hands will be
able to do it. I will use it for diving. Mordieu  , but it is a desolate place, this
island which is yours. There is no doubt about it. Who would think that a
ship sank here, and also lay in shallow water?      
"It's pretty lonely," said Hubert, his eyes fixed on the white beach, the
palm trees and the gray-green expanse of cedar laurel bushes. Now that
he was close to shore, all the exhilaration of the treasure hunt had passed
from him, giving way to a feeling of melancholy. Oh, those palm trees, that
rag of a tent fluttering in the wind, that scorching splash of sun on the
beach, what visions of desolation have they not aroused! The place
seemed to him full of death and tragedy, repulsive, as if the shadow of
Simon Serpente was walking under the blazing sun of the beach, as if the
voices of the seagulls were the voices of his men; ghosts of old buccaneers
condemned to everlasting agitation and discontent.    
But with the nose of the boat running aground on the sand, it all
passed. He threw himself overboard and helped her up the beach as far as
the weight of her cargo allowed them to pull her; the quarterboat ran
aground right next to her, then the unloading began.  
While he was still in class, Sagesse, leaving Jules to watch, took
Hubert's arm.
“Come on,” he said, “let's look at her. The tide is half out and it
should show. 
232  "Over here," said Hubert.
He led his companion through the bushes, avoiding the place where
he knew, face down in the midst of the laurel cedars, Jaques' body lay; he
didn't even dare to look twice towards the place, and he breathed more
freely when they had passed him. 
The line he was taking would also lead them about twenty yards west
of the mound beside which Jaques had discovered the belt and purse and
the skeleton to which they belonged.

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Within minutes they were freed from the bushes and onto the North
Beach.
The tide was over halfway and the entire reef circling the lagoon was
visible. Hubert led the path to the reef, then along it, until he reached the
spot opposite the eaves, cultivated by weeds and protruding from the
water. 
“Look,” he said pointing to the lagoon.
Wisdom without a word, stared at the vision beneath him.
It was part of the mystery of the sea that the water in the lagoon
changed its brightness and clarity with the tide; with a breaking tide, and
at full, its diamond luster faded almost imperceptibly and lighted almost
imperceptibly with the ebb. One would not have noticed the fact without
the submerged ship and its crust of coral jewels; which showed lighter or
darker depending on the clarity of the water.   
Perhaps outside the lagoon the seabed contained clay which
almost imperceptibly vaporized the incoming water - who knows? - but
the fact remained that at mid-tide of ebb she was more brilliantly defined
than at mid-tide of full - as at -day.
233  Hubert, as he stood next to Sagesse, also watching, followed the
fish-like shape and trend of the swelling ramparts with his eyes. At the
sight of her and the thought of the diving apparatus and all the rescue
gear, the treasure fever was upon him again, hot and
strong. Mordieu  !  when it was broken, what couldn't they find?   
He turned from her to Wisdom, expecting to read his own eagerness
on the Captain's face, but Wisdom's face showed nothing.
“Well,” said Hubert, “what do you think of her?
Wisdom did not seem to hear the remark; he seemed deep in
thought. 
Then he spat in the water and walked back along the reef to the
shore. Hubert followed him. 
"Well, what do you think of her?
"What am I thinking? Faith!  I think she was sunk to her moorings.  
There was a note of sadness in his tone.

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"Do you think it was not destroyed?"

“She is lying too much even on a skittle; she is lying near this reef as a
boat would lie if it were scuttled at its moorings. 
"But, see here, if she was moored in this basin, she must have
entered there, and there is no opening to admit a ship."
“Not now - but about eighty years ago there was probably an
opening, and this place was kind of a port. Serpente would have used this
port. 
"But," said Hubert, "why would he have scuttled his ship?"
"Oh why? - who knows? We know he was chased; we know he had a
cargo of slaves and a crew that each witnessed against him. He may have
kept a 234 boat stocked and moored alongside the ship; then at night,
with a Confederate, would close the hatches, the main and the fo'cs'le ,
scuttled her and headed for the American coast in the boat - see?     
Wisdom seemed to have resolved the whole question in her dark
mind and seemed deeply dissatisfied with the solution found.
“But,” said Hubert, “what about these bones we found, this skull?
“Oh, the skull! He may have been killed in his turn and stolen his
treasure by his confederate, who knows? there are a hundred ways to
make skulls in a craft like this. Only I say this: I was lying a hundred to one,
if he scuttled his ship, he did not scuttle her with the money on board.   
"So it's a hundred to one, we won't find anything."
“I said it was a hundred to one if he scuttled it, the money wasn't on
board. I don't know whether he scuttled it or not; I just guess he did. No,
the odds aren't that bad, but they're not as good as I thought they
were. But-"    
"Yes?"
“I don't feel the money there. Maybe it's stupidity, maybe I don't
know what, but when there's money in something, I seem to know it. I
don't have the impression that there is money on this ship.  
They did not come back by the path through the bushes, but by the
eastern beach. From their left came the cries of seagulls, from their right
the cries and cries of negroes disembarking the last load of the boat. 

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The diving apparatus was already on the ground, protected by a sail

stretched between two of the palms; the white sand was strewn with
packages and boxes. Wisdom, who 235 thought of everything, was not
going to take any chances; provisions for three months for the shore part
were being disembarked, as there was always a risk that the ship would be
carried off the island and leave the shore part stranded.    
Not only stores had to be unloaded, but a tent had to be erected to
protect them from the sun. It was now in place. 
Two of the crew members with cutlasses made their way through the
bushes for the men who would have to carry the boat to the lagoon.
While Hubert and Sagesse watched the busy crowd, Sagesse drew a
cigar from his pocket and lit it. Hubert looked for his pipe in his pocket,
found it and filled it; but before he could turn on a light, a horrible thing
happened.  

236
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE SKULLS
One of the negroes, working in the middle of the bushes, uttered a
cry, bent down, picked up something and held it in the air. It was a skull. 
“ My faith!  Said Wisdom, taking Hubert's arm and leading him to
where the negro was standing with his skull still in the
air. " Skeleton Island, as you used to call this place, doesn't sound
abnormal in name."    
Hubert, pale to the lips, did not answer. He stepped forward
alongside Wisdom; he dared not step back or show emotion, as the entire
disembarking party gathered to see what was in the middle of the
bushes. Besides, he had accidentally killed Jaques, he told himself. Why
would he hesitate at the sight of his bones?    
But no logic could veil the horror of the thing. See you at the skull of a
man to whom you spoke, with whom you have worked side by side with
whom you joked, and that the skull is your work, your
terrible masterpiece  of work  , that but for you, he would be clothed with

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flesh and filled with soul; it is the most tragic spectacle on which the gaze
of man can fall.    
“ My God!  Said Wisdom, taking the thing from the negro's hands. "So
that must be the skull of the man who landed here with you and left dead
- what was his name, you say?"    
"Jaques."
237  " Ah,  yes  , Jaques…" He stirred in the middle of the bushes with
his foot. “And here are the bones of Monsieur Jaques. He quickly became
a skeleton, Monsieur Jaques, but I saw a man become a skeleton in the
tropics in a week. The crabs, the larvae, the sun, all help in the work. He
bent down and picked up a box of tobacco and a sailor's belt with a knife
attached.      
"Why, what is it?" He hadn't pulled his knife! 
“He had drawn it,” said Hubert, “but I picked it up and put it back in
its scabbard.
The spectators knew nothing of the tragedy under these words, nor
of the accusation veiled in the words of Wisdom; but they noticed that
Hubert was shivering like a man suffering from fever. 
“Well,” said Sagesse, “we will keep the belt and the knife as
memories of Monsieur Jaques. Here, Jules, take them back to the boat
with you when you go, take a spade and dig a hole in the sand for these
bones. 
He turned away and the men resumed the work of unpacking and
storing provisions and equipment. At eight bells, noon, all was
over; the quarterboat was dragged high on the beach and ready to be
hauled across the islet, and hands bumped for dinner. Wisdom and Hubert
ate separate from each other, in the shade of a sail specially rigged for
them and which formed their tent at night. The white sand near the
bushes showed traces of having been turned with a shovel where Jaques'
bones had been buried. Hubert saw the place, but it didn't bother him: the
treasure fever had driven everything away; things looked strange and
familiar; he had forgotten the discouraging words of Wisdom; his
imagination saw the sand covered with bags of dollars and cases of
bullion; he laughed while eating. But Wisdom did not laugh, barely spoke
and, the meal over, drew a cigar from his pocket and lit it.           

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He was seated in the shade of the canvas; the sand and the blue sea
were before him. On the sand just before the tent, the shadows of the
palm trees began to crawl - it was one o'clock.  
As he sat like that, listening to the chanty of the negroes, who were
starting to pull the boat across the island, suddenly he uttered an
exclamation and hit his knee with his hand.
An idea had apparently occurred to him. He called Hubert, who had
stood up and was walking up and down on the sand outside. 
Hubert approached.
“Well,” he said, “what is it?
"An idea," said the captain. "We came here, but we did not observe
the label." 
"Ah, what are you saying? asked Hubert, who had heard the word
during his life, but did not know the meaning. 
"We did not call on the owner of the place."
"The owner ?
“Simon Serpente .”
“Ah! I had forgotten . " 
Sagesse stood up and took Hubert's arm.
“Come on,” he said, “let's go find the man's body. It would be curious,
in any case, to see them. Do you know where you last saw them?  
"Perfectly," Hubert replied, leading the way through the bushes.
The boat was transported on rollers on a path 239 cut through the
bushes, and the pulley - haul chanty of the negroes crossed with the cries
of the seagulls: 
“ In Fort de France.  Ay ho!
In Fort de France.  Ay ho!  ”

and seagulls, tired by the wind:

“Jaques — Jaques — Jaques!”
"It was near here," said Hubert.

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They had come to the small rise in the ground in the middle of the
bushes, and of course his foot, taking its next step forward, hit something
hard and hollow.
He bent down and picked it up. It was the skull that was unlike any
other skull, either man or beast. 
Wisdom held the thing in his hand for a moment as he looked
around. At his feet, vaguely through the branches of the cedar laurel
bushes, he could see Serpente's bones gleaming white, half exposed, half
hidden. 
Then, throwing his skull in the air and catching it, he burst out
laughing. In the blink of an eye, his depression was gone. 
“  Mordieu  !  said Hubert, you look happy. "Perhaps. It's like this thing
told me, “You're wrong. The treasure is on board the ship. Stretch out
your hand, my friend, and take it. ''      
He threw the skull in the middle of the bushes and turned to watch
the negroes carrying the boat to the north beach.
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