"A drunken farmer, or traveling pedler.... Et jadis fusmes si mignotes ... and so dainty once!"
"No!" His voice took the ring of decision. She didn't hear him. Her voice broke into a torrent of sobs.
"Take me in your arms, Shane, once more. And let my heart come into your heart, where it's so warm ... and I'll have something to remember in the days when it will be ... so cold, so cold ... and I'll be there warming old bones.... A petit feu de chenevotes.... Shane, dearest, please...."
He took her in his arms, and her body seemed to be some light envelope in which a great turmoil of spirit beat, as a wild bird beats against a cage.... He could hardly hold her body so much was her tortured sobbing.... So much did what was within wheel and beat, beat and wheel, in unendurable panic. Her voice murmured in his wet shoulder:
"Pauvre vielle sote! O Shane, Shane ... pauvre vielle sote!" ...
§ 12
Above him, to starboard, he could hear the churning of the tug that was to take them from the docks to the open sea. Overhead the pilot was stamping impatiently. Forward the mate was roaring like a bull:
"Where is that damned apprentice? Tell him to lay aft and bear a hand with the warps."
In a minute or so he would have to go on the poop and give orders to let go and haul in. The tug was blowing, "Hurry up...." He ought to be on deck now.... He hated to go up ... he hated to see the last of Marseilles ... he would never see Marseilles again....
Was all ready? Yes, all was ready. Cargo, supplies, sea-chest, everything for the long voyage he had decided—had to decide—on at the last minute. Forward across the Atlantic to where the sou'east trades blew, and then south'ard reaching under all sail—the fleecy clouds, the bright constellations of the alien pole, the strange fish-like birds, the flying-fish, the bonita, the albacore; the chill gust from the River Plate; the roar of the gales of the forties; the tremendous fight around the Horn, with a glimpse of land now and then as they fought for easting—the bleak rocks of Diego Ramirez and the Iledefonsos, and perhaps the blue ridge of Cape Horn, or of the False Cape; then, northward to Callao ... anywhere, everywhere ... new seas, new lands, new cities ... but never again Marseilles....