Gaspard got up and dressed and then the two men left the house and walked down the Rue du Morne side by side towards the harbour. Often in his life, Sagesse had been approached on the subject of sunken treasure. The Caribbean and the Atlantic about the Bahamas give a fine field for theoretical treasure-seekers, locations of sunken ships had been brought to him off Rum Cay, off Grand Cayman, off Matanzas. The ships were there right enough only waiting to be rifled, but Sagesse would have nothing to do with them. He had a profound knowledge of the sea and its trickery. He knew that though the ships were there they were tormented by currents, currents that varied with the ebb and flow so that divers could work only at slack; he knew the power of these currents to heap sand and hide treasure. He had seen the end of a broken deep-sea cable brought up, half a mile of it tied in knots by the mischievous hands of the currents as though some giant had been playing with it.
“When a treasure ship lies a prey to the currents of the sea, there is no use in hunting for treasure or for anything but disappointment,” was an axiom with him.
What led him to the present adventure was the fact that the ship was lying in a still lagoon in which diving operations could be conducted as easily as in a lake. She was not sanded up but coralled over, and if there was “stuff” in her a few charges of dynamite would soon lay her open.
The morning was bright over the sea when they reached the harbour side, La Belle Arlésienne was lying out on the blue water, the lighters beside her and the cargo coming out to the tune of winch pawls and the chanty of the negroes—
A Fort de France Ay ho!
A Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux,
Ay ho!
A Fort de France,
A Fort de France,
Ay ho!
To southward of La Belle Arlésienne a big three-master was getting up anchor, a cable ship the Grappler was tramping the bay taking soundings. The water sinks to a tremendous depth here between Martinique and Dominica and from the Grappler away out on the violet blue of the “deeps” came the faint sewing-machine whirr of the Kelvin sounder at work.
Canotiers were paddling their tiny cargoes round the steamer from New York that had arrived the evening before and would start at noon; one could see the little canotiers, lemon-coloured slips of children standing up and diving for coins flung by the passengers.
It was a picture full of the spirit of morning, full of colour, and light, and movement, the hot wind of the tropics stirring flags and shaking out sail-cloth; sea gulls were fishing, flickering snow-white in the wind, their querulous cries came across the bay with the clank of the winch pawls, capstan pawls, and anchor-chain, and the endless chanty—
A Fort de France Ay ho!
A Fort de France Ay ho!
Bonjou Doux-Doux,
Ay ho!
A Fort de France,
A Fort de France,
Ay ho!
Faint, musical with distance.