But it was Jean who answered—and his voice was lifted as though in song, radiant, triumphant, deathless.
"You are to be sent back to France, Marie-Louise, Marie-Louise—with me."
— XIII —
DAWN
Strange noises! The myriad voices of the ship talking one to another—the creak and grind of girders and stringers; the grunting, faintly from far above, of the wooden superstructure; the whine and complaint of the deck-beams as the vessel lurched to the sea; the sibilant hiss and whir of the racing screws lifting from the water; the swift infuriated response of the unfettered engines, chattering angrily, as it were, in wrath for the scurvy trick played upon them; the eternal dull, moaning throb, throb, throb from everywhere, that seemed finally to absorb these voices unto itself and stand as spokesman for them all. Strange noises—a medley of pain, of travail, of strain, human almost in its outcry, seeking relief from unendurable effort and distress.
For days and days they had talked like that, and Jean had listened—listened through the watches of the day and night, listened through the hours of his own toil and pain, and the cursings of the raw-boned, wizened apparition that came and went through the murky gloom of the bunker, and croaked continually like some ill-omened thing for coal, coal, coal, lifting a brutal fist at times to enforce the words. But, too, as he had listened, through the plaint of this strange medley had come the lilt, underlying all, of another refrain that all these voices seemed to sing—a refrain that found a deeper echo in his own soul, that seemed to make the kin between him and these inanimate things the closer, a refrain of hope, a refrain in which lay immortal happiness.
"In five days ... in three days ... in one day more we shall reach France, France, France—and the end of strife—France—and the end of strife."
And now that refrain was changed again, and it made his heart leap, and he laughed out in pure joy, as he swept the great sweat beads from his forehead.
"To-day—to-day—to-day we shall reach France—reach France—reach France!"