As the day grew stronger, the vision of La Belle Arlésienne grew more remote.
Infinite distance seemed drawing her away, slowly, almost imperceptibly; now a ship, now a tiny boat, now a speck vanishing in the sun-dazzle above the azure.
CHAPTER XXX
PEDRO
Gaspard, leaning on the taffrail, watched Martinique dwindling in the sun-blaze and sea-dazzle. Dominica, to eastward, stood vague, and ghostly on the horizon; to westward the sea showed nothing but the purple of an infinite pansy, an ocean of St. Estèphe or Macon blazed upon by the fiercest light of the tropics.
Sagesse was standing by the negro who was at the wheel, and La Belle Arlésienne was heading nor’ nor’-west on a course that would take her to westward of St. Kitts and past the Virgin Islands. Here Sagesse would steer a west-nor’-west course. It would be a quicker passage than in coming, for they had now with them the South Equatorial current.
Gaspard, as he turned from the taffrail, heard Sagesse give an order for the hands to man the lee braces. They were beyond the shelter of the island now, and the steady blow of the trades was bending La Belle Arlésienne over gently, as though a great hand were playing with her. “Now I will capsize you,” would sigh the voice to which the hand belonged, speaking with a deep hum through the taut, twanging rigging, whilst La Belle would bend like an old coquette to the gentle pressure, till, with a groan of the rudder and a dash of sparkling spray, she would remember herself and come to a more even keel.
Gaspard had noticed the number of the crew when he came on board; besides Sagesse and Jules there were ten hands, all negroes, large, well set-up men, well fitted for the arduous work before them, with the exception of one, an undersized, shifty-eyed and depressed-looking individual from Porto Rico.
“Ten,” said Gaspard to himself, as he counted them. “With Sagesse and Jules that makes twelve, and with me thirteen. Thirteen, and we start on a Friday, and we expect luck!”