He looked attentively at the little picture. A hair’s-breadth beyond the southern edge he knew that the body of Yves was lying amidst the bay-cedar bushes, in the middle, there, the bones of Serpente, just beyond the northern edge, the ship of coral patient in the green lagoon; that tiny spur to southward was the place where he stood when he first felt the haunting “grue,” and from there he had swum to the boat. The sea gulls would still be flying over those reefs to the southeast, calling wheeling, fishing.—
“It’s all clear water to westward,” said Sagesse. “Ten fathom close in shore; we can anchor there; sandy beach, you told me it was, to southward—are you sure?”
“Mon Dieu! Sure! If you had been there, as I was, you would be sure.” He had grown so friendly with Sagesse in the last few days that he could talk about intimate things to him, and with southern vehemence he began to paint rapidly in words the horror of that time, lost, locked away by the sea on that spot where the wind and the sun and the silence were conspirators with madness.
Sagesse listened, and never did a man seem more friendly and interested than Captain Pierre Sagesse, as he sat on the main hatch of La Belle Arlésienne, listening to the tale of the man whom he had sworn in his heart to be revenged on; but not by the brutal methods of ordinary revenge that would have satisfied an ordinary man.
That night Gaspard did not join Sagesse in his rum-and-water; he smoked his pipe on deck. The moon would not rise till after midnight, and though the stars were unclouded they were paled to insignificance by the sea. La Belle Arlésienne seemed sailing through an ocean of liquid phosphorus. The sea burned white, dimly glowing in the distance like a snow-covered country, brightly glowing at the ship’s side, and furiously smouldering in the wake; it was the light of dead-wood, of corpse fires, of things rotten, dismal as the light from the lake of Dante where dwell the spirits of the damned.
At ten o’clock Gaspard went to his bunk; Sagesse, with the prospect of a hard day’s work on the morrow, was already in his and snoring. The deck was in charge of Jules.
For a long time Gaspard could not sleep, haunted by the thoughts of the morrow. Notwithstanding his hatred of the island and his half-formed resolve to have no share in the treasure, the treasure had already laid ghostly hands upon him. No man can withstand the fascination of the near presence of free gold. Men may be cold to women, to wine, to sin, but gold hidden and to be had for the finding is a magnet for all men, even as it was for Gaspard. He had been brooding upon it all day, and now, as he lay in his bunk, it chased away sleep; it made him forget Marie.
It would seem that this fatal island had the power of casting him from his proper path. Here for the sake of the gold in the belt he had forgotten his brotherhood to Yves, here for the sake of the gold in the ship he was forgetting his love for the woman who loved him.
A week ago he had no thought for the treasure; four days ago he had little thought of it; yesterday it was beginning to haunt his dreams; to-night it had him in its grip. The nearer they came to it, the stronger grew the attraction.
As he lay in his bunk he saw sacks large as corn-sacks bursting with napoleons; he saw jewels such as he had seen in the shop windows of Marseilles; he saw wealth, not as a power to be used, but in its crude form of wealth. And this is how Serpente had seen it, and all these lousy pirates, who, incapable of using gold except in a tavern or a gambling-hell, ransacked the Caribbean, slew men, and with the wealth of the Indies in their pockets found peace at last in a noose.