The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Then he sat and contemplated the glittering battalions of his treasure. White, red, blue, the blue of the turquoise, the wine colour of the amethyst, the black of the pearl, he feasted his eyes on them all. Then, turning on his back, shutting his eyes and casting his right hand backwards across them, he laughed.

He could see them almost better with his eyes shut. That was the most delightful and extraordinary moment in his life, it would have been in any man’s life; coloured Fortune, real, tangible Fortune, Fortune in her most beautiful guise at his elbow and the whole blue world before him; what he would do with it all he did not dream; great houses of the wealthy people, snow-white yachts that he had seen in the various parts of the world, the vision of the saloon of the Rhone laid out with cut glass and flowers arose before him for a moment; all that belonged to the world of the wealthy, all that world was his now, but he built no imaginary palaces yet, just for the moment the sensation of possession was all powerful, he wanted nothing else.

Marie was fully alive and in the background of his mind, and the knowledge that his wealth would enable him to reach her was there and formed part of his satisfaction; but he saw nothing truly yet but the great, blinding light that Fortune was flashing in his eyes.

As he lay, the wash of the waves on the desolate beach, the blowing of the wind across the bay-cedar bushes, the crying of the frigate birds and cormorants came to him like sounds heard in a dream.

Then the crying of the birds led his thoughts back to Yves and Yves led him back to the stokehold. He could hear the roar of the furnaces and the boom of the sea, the clatter of the ash lift, the clash of the furnace doors. The vision of Fortune had driven all that from his mind. In the last couple of hours, he had passed through an amazing development; all the nobility and pride in his nature had been quickened into life, latent powers until now unsuspected were awakening in his being, wealth, and the power of wealth were at his disposal. He felt like some exiled king who had at last come to his own, and then, lo and behold, like some horrible poor relation into his dream stepped the stoker of the Rhone. Gaspard Cadillac, the Moco, came to spoil the dreams of Gaspard Cadillac, the wealthy man. Wealth, that thing for which we all crave, had been in his possession scarcely an hour when it hit him a blow.

“Hi, there, you dog of a Moco, hurry your stumps, down to your furnace, vite!—vite!—vite!”

Those words had been shot at him by Cuillard, the chief engineer of the Rhone as he had come aboard across the Messagerie wharf at Marseilles before starting. They were nothing to a stoker, but the remembrance of them was bitter now, flame-like hatred against Cuillard shot up in his breast, till he remembered that Cuillard was silent forever out there where the Rhone was lying by the reef to southward. But that thought gave him no relief against the past that Cuillard’s words had evoked. That wretched past! No present wealth could atone for all those years of his life and their slavery. Yet only a few hours ago that past had seemed not amiss!

Truly the lamp of fortune lights many things besides happiness.

He sat up and looked at his hands. They were the hands of a stoker and nothing on earth would make them anything else. He was not ashamed of them, he was not thinking that in the future those hands would proclaim him what he was. No, but he was thinking of the black years those hands had done slave’s work whilst here was lying the wealth that would have raised him to a high position in the world. Ah! could he have bought those fifteen years back, he would at that moment have given half of the glittering stones to Time, utterly forgetting that in that bargain he would have lost a white pearl beyond all earthly jewels—Marie.

The wind had been falling and now was little more than a steady breeze, afternoon was upon the island and the sea was falling with the ebbing tide. He gathered his fortune together into the handkerchief that had contained it, then he placed this for extra security into his own handkerchief. He knotted the corners tightly and then placed the little bundle by the stem of the palm tree nearest him; he placed the snake of gold beside the bundle, the ring on his finger, and the great white pearl in his right-hand pocket.