He was rich.
The sea had given him the riches that other men toil their lives for, given it to him in one great glittering handful. He seemed standing before a blinding light. It seemed unthinkable that he who had striven all his life for a pittance, working now as a sailor before the mast, now as a slave in the blind alley of the stokehold, it seemed unthinkable that he should have drawn this tremendous and glittering prize.
As he stood in the blazing sunshine, the wind blowing his hair about his eyes, his eyes staring, astonished, fixed, as though he were gazing at Fortune herself, a black shadow passed over him. It was the shadow of a cormorant.
Away out across the waves other birds were coming to the feast; the wreck and the stranded corpses had been signalled for miles across the sea, for the sea, like the desert, has a watch-tower—the air, and a watchman who never leaves that tower—eternal Hunger.
The bird cried as it wheeled and the cry brought Gaspard to his senses. He glanced up, then down at the swarming beach; then, touching his pocket to make sure that the contents were safe, he turned from the horrors around him and made towards the southern beach, running.
He wished to be alone with his treasure. He shouted like a boy as he ran, taking the road through the bushes that Serpente’s sailors had cut for the boat. The jewelled snake round his throat glittered and flashed; never was there a more extraordinary picture than this man, half ragged, his clothes stained with sea-salt, his hair blowing on the wind, the jewelled serpent around his neck, running and shouting as he ran to the desolation around him, and with Fortune.
At the place where the palm trees lay prone on the sand he stopped, sat down, took the serpent of gold from around his throat and placed it on the sand beside him, and beside it the parcel.
Then from his pocket he took the knotted handkerchief and the ring. He placed the ring by the pearl and then he unknotted the handkerchief and poured the contents on the white sand between his legs.