La Belle Arlésienne was coming ashore, now uplifted on the crest of a wave, now vanishing in a hollow, dismasted all but for the stump of the foremast, from which a rag of canvas was wildly flying. La Belle Arlésienne was being driven to the lagoon by the merciless whip of the wind.
The hag of the sea had found her master at last; stealth and cunning could not save her now, nor trickery, nor subterfuge. She had flung them all away. Like some witch who had worked evil long in silence, dragged at last shrieking to the gallows, the old barquentine seemed fighting against her fate.
Her fluttering rags of canvas seemed clawing at the wind; she screamed, and Gaspard on his knees could hear her screams in the high-pitched wailing of her crew, the shrill pig-like screaming of negroes hurled and huddled together, animals waiting for inevitable death.
A moment he saw her held up strong in the moonlight on the crest of a vast wave; then a cloud drew a skirt of shadow over her and when the moon broke through again she was gone, deep in the pocket of the lagoon, over which the thirty-foot waves were rushing shoreward.
CHAPTER XL
THE PASSING OF SAGESSE
He must have fallen asleep as he knelt, for when he regained consciousness he had no memory of having lain down. Yet he was lying on his side amidst the bushes, the day was broad, the sun shining, the sky without a cloud, though still swept by the rushing wind.
He remembered all that had passed clearly and distinctly and the miracle of that blue sky above him, after the black and howling chaos of the night, filled his heart with thankfulness untold.
He rose to his feet. His clothes were stiff with sea-salt, his eyes half-blinded by the light. Then he cried out in astonishment. The island, under the sun, and surrounded by the racing amethyst of the sea, lay glittering white as frost. It was sea-salt from the spray of the night before. The palm trees were no longer there. There was nothing to be seen but the winter-white bushes beneath the burning sun. Bodies were washing ashore on the beach close to him, but he scarcely glanced at them, the desolation before him held him motionless and the knowledge that everything was blown away, provisions, tent, everything!