As he stood waiting for Sagesse to return and finish the conversation, he saw Marie again just as he had seen her that day on the cliff at Grande Anse, the sea wind fluttering her robe and the sun clasping her little head between his two great golden hands.
Then Sagesse appeared, returning from the fo’cs’le, but he did not seem in a humour to continue the conversation.
He seemed disturbed in his mind about something.
CHAPTER XXXI
A FORT DE FRANCE, AY, HO!
That night when Gaspard was on deck, smoking a pipe before turning in, he heard the sound of laughter coming from away forward.
There was no light on deck but the light of the binnacle lamp and a glimmer from a crack in the deck-house door which was closed, and out of the darkness away forward came this sudden shock of laughter, not loud, but hard, mirthless, and inhuman.
If a fiend had dropped from the sky and stridden the bowsprit, he might have emitted such a laugh at La Belle Arlésienne, her captain, her crew, and her venture before putting his blight upon the vessel and whooping into the sea.
Gaspard glanced at the steersman. He was a big negro, naked to his waist in the hot night, a colossal figure touched by the binnacle light. Whether he heard or whether he did not hear it was impossible to say; he shewed neither sign nor movement, with the exception of the movement of the great right hand upon the wheel spoke, now visible, now fleeting into darkness.