"Your friend won't need any help but mine, and I'll introduce him to Captain Lalouette, an old acquaintance, who will be very glad to be of service to him."
"So that's settled," said Chéri-Bibi, bluntly, concealing his emotion. "But what's happened to our friend Yoyo?"
At that moment Yoyo came into the room. Chéri-Bibi must have read some uneasiness in the expression of his face for he asked him what was the matter.
"Nothing; all goes well," replied Yoyo somewhat laconically.
They sat down to supper, which grew very lively. The hostess and her daughters made themselves agreeable. Chéri-Bibi was the most exuberant of the party. He did not eat, he devoured his food. Moreover, he drank to excess. He who prided himself on having maintained throughout his adventurous career the greatest abstemiousness and showed an abstainer's contempt for drunkards, continually held out his glass, and kept level with Fernandez, who was considered the hardest drinker on the coast.
The Nut alone neither ate nor drank. But he was no more astonished at anything Chéri-Bibi did than Chéri-Bibi was astonished at his doings. They both knew quite well what this excessive eating and drinking on the one hand, and this complete abstinence on the other really meant, and that it had its origin in both cases in the thought which never left their minds, that the following night, at that particular hour, they would have said good-bye to each other with very considerable chances of never meeting again.
Ten years side by side in a convict settlement bring about frightful hatreds, or friendships which depend upon something almost higher than liking, and create a bond of moral unity, as it were, which does not break without some excruciating wrench.
Convicts have been known to die rather than to allow themselves to be parted. And it might be that if suicide had not been forbidden to Chéri-Bibi for reasons which we shall know one day, that supper night at Fernandez's inn might, by his own desperate act, have been his last. For that matter it was almost equally fatal to him though not by any design of his own.
He had judged rightly when he read on Yoyo's face some degree of uneasiness. During the meal Yoyo often left the room. First he subjected the more or less pallid faces in the ordinary bar to a scrutiny, and then he strolled round the house.
The starting point of his secret agitation was the squawk of a paroquet which scarcely ever left them as they sailed down the Oyapok. They were near the forest in which these birds abound, and it was to some extent natural that they should hear them, but the inn was a considerable distance from the forest. Moreover, certain shadowy movements round the inn almost level with the ground seemed to Yoyo suspicious. He climbed to the balcony, mounting quickly and coming down almost immediately. This time obviously there was an end to his doubts.