As he stood looking away to southward over the blue sea, he heard the voice of the spirit that had mostly wrought the change in him. It was the voice of Martinique calling to him, the voice of Marie.
Ché.
In a moment and for a moment, Fortune, the island, everything, was forgotten.
Ché.
The little word came on the breeze to him. Was she, too, standing on some beach or headland gazing over the sea towards him? Was the little word a butterfly of thought blown to him on the breeze that was blowing from there?
Who can say, but he heard it as distinctly as he had heard it that evening when standing on the road to Morne Rouge and looking down at St. Pierre, he had waited for her and she had come to him.
He turned away from the sea, then he turned to it again and swept the horizon as though looking for a sail. There was nothing to be seen.
He walked back along the sea edge in the direction of the palms; the seven palms had been cast down by the rush of the hurricane, just as the stakes of a stock fence might be cast down by the rush of wild cattle; now, and for the first time, the thought occurred to Gaspard that with the palms gone the islet would be less likely to attract the attention of a passing ship. He looked at them as they lay, and then he approached the bundle of treasure and the glittering snake of gold, which were lying by the bole of the westernmost of the fallen trees. He touched the bundle with his foot. The action seemed half involuntary; he did not seem to be thinking of the bundle or its contents. Nor was he.
He was thinking of Marie.
A wild longing, such as the prisoned bird may feel for the blue sky, filled him, subordinating everything else to the thought of the being he loved.