It seemed as though the very gulls were mocking him.
“Yves,—Yves,—Yves.”
He turned and strode up the sand to where Yves was sitting beneath the palm trees.
The sun was sinking now over Tampico way in a sky of living gold, the western sea, leaping to meet him, flashed his splendour to the very shores of the islet; each flake of foam seemed a flake of primrose light and the sands stretched like sands of gold by the shores of the golden sea.
Gaspard came right up to Yves, the splendour of the sunset on his face, his hands clenched in his pockets, his lips dry.
“All the same,” said Gaspard, as though he were continuing a conversation, “you are a thief, and a son of a thief—more fool I to chum with a dog of a Ponantaise.”
Yves rose up; he was a slow man to wrath, but terrible when roused. The belt and the pouch containing the money were lying at his feet; he kicked them aside as he faced the Moco.
“You say—”
“I say what I have said.”
“After the fashion of the monkeys,” replied Yves, “that say what they have said all day long—drop that!”