Sagesse, leading the way, they passed along the shore edge to the Place Bertine.
The sunlight was just striking the Place Bertine over the shoulder of Pelée. In the blaze of morning light with the sea and wind shaking the tamarind trees, it formed a bright picture; women’s coloured dresses, turbans of yellow madras, men, some clad in white, some half naked, rolling the sugar hogsheads, laughing, and singing as they worked, all coloured men, from the white Creole to the jet-black negro; children—and you may be sure that wherever there is sugar either in cane or barrel you will find children—playing games, running messages; children black as sloes, yellow as bananas, honey-coloured babies naked as on the day they were born; over all the warm tropic wind blowing lazily, mixing the scent of the sea with the perfume of the land, cigar scent—for even the women are smoking the black Martinique bouts,—and the subtle ubiquitous scent of sugar in bulk.
Sagesse led the way across the Place to the row of warehouses and go-downs bordering it on the shore edge. He paused at an archway giving entrance to a big twilit warehouse, peeped into the gloom of the place as if in search of someone or something, and then entered followed by Gaspard.
It was an extraordinary warehouse, this, smelling of tar, sail-cloth, and rope. Piles of rusty chain, cable, old anchors, capstan bars, spars of all sorts, blocks of all sizes lay about, and in the gloom, ropes and remnants of tackle hanging from the beams overhead gave a last touch to the picture. One might have fancied it a cave in which a ship had come to wreck, or several ships for the matter of that.
In the midst of all the rubbish and odds and ends, the owner of the place, Monsieur Jaques, known as Jaques tout court by shipmasters from Port of Spain to Port Royal, moved about superintending three men who were engaged with palm and needle patching a sail spread on a vacant space of the floor.
There are some men who, vulture-like, make their living out of the ruin and dead bones of things, only in that way do they prosper, Jaques was one of these men, though you would never have guessed his vulturous instincts from his appearance which was that of a plump prosperous-looking business man, rather past the prime of life, grey-headed, clean-shaven, always smiling, always calm, always polite, always seeming to yield to your wishes—but iron in driving a bargain.
His business in life was the buying up of old ships and odds and ends of ships for next to nothing, and selling the remains at a profit. If you wanted an anchor or a suit of sails or a spar, he could always supply you. He would buy wrecks even when they were sunken—that is to say, of course, if they were lying in shallow water. He had bought in this way the Amine-Martell, lying on the thunderous beach to westward of Grande Anse. The bay in which she was lying was a death trap inaccessible from the sea or from the land, the cliffs were sheer walls of black rock polished and flawless; by lowering men over the cliff edge by ropes he had salved thirty-five thousand dollars in gold coin—a profitable business considering the fact that he had paid only two thousand dollars for her as she lay.
From Curaçoa to Porto Rico he had conducted salvage operations, fighting the sea for the pickings of ships, conducting the operations in person when there seemed a chance of good profits on the job.
Sagesse took Monsieur Jaques aside and explained what he wanted whilst Gaspard sat on a spar-end and watched the sail-patchers at work.
“I’ve got some diving work on hand,” said Sagesse. “I want two divers’ suits, a pump, everything complete. Have you them, and how much will you charge to hire them for two months?”