“The Rhone, I have seen her in Havana harbour, what tonnage was she? Oh, I know, seven thousand; she and the Roxelane were sister ships. The Roxelane called regularly at St. Pierre. Oh, yes, I ought to know her, Martinique bred as I am. Not born, mind you. No, I was born at Arles, but I have spent thirty years in these seas. One can make money in these seas, but one never can forget the old land, and you were born at Montpellier, you say, ’tis the same thing, and all Provençals are brothers. Think you, if I picked up a Dutchlander or an English, or even a Ponantaise, I would be giving him rum in my cabin—” Then mellowed by the rum and the presence of another Provençal, he leaned his elbows further on the table and continued talking and asking questions without seeming to hear the answer.
CHAPTER XII
RUM
He had done big things, had Captain Sagesse, since the day thirty years and more ago when, deserting from a French ship, he had taken up his abode at St. Pierre. Beginning at the very bottom, he had worked his way up to comparative affluence, and whilst plying Gaspard with questions he interpolated fragments of his own history. Captain Sagesse was the only subject of very deep interest to Captain Sagesse; had he been going to his own execution he would have cast fragments of his history to the crowd, he was a walking autobiography, and he had been closed for three weeks, inasmuch as the crew consisting entirely of blacks, he had no one to open himself to. He told of how he worked the vessel entirely with blacks, Barbadians, and when he had exhausted his slight interest in Gaspard and his history he returned to himself, talking as though Gaspard were an old friend just stepped aboard, the freemasonry of the south and a common birthplace giving him the familiarity of long acquaintanceship. There was scarcely a disreputable transaction in which a ship’s keel could find a place but it seemed that Captain Sagesse and his barque, the Belle Arlésienne, had been in it—gun running in the Spanish-American war, smuggling, and worse. He owned the vessel, he owned property in Martinique and very questionable property in St. Pierre; and inspired now by rum and what seemed at first blush a charming and natural naïveté, he told about himself and his doings, his possessions and aspirations with characteristic force and freedom.
Gaspard, at first half drowsy with weariness, listened like a person in a dream to the chatter of the other, then, the rum beginning to take effect upon him, he found himself laughing at things which might have made him frown if listened to in strict sobriety. He was sinner enough, but in his small way in life he had dealt straightly with his fellows, he had, at all events, no feeling for a scoundrel, and Captain Sagesse was scoundrel enough, heaven knows, to judge by his conversation. He had got the better of governments, men, and women; he gave neither names nor dates nor places, talking in his loose way with nothing more definite than, “It was an islet, it might have been fifty miles south or fifty miles north of Rum Cay—but that doesn’t matter,” or “Honorine, that might have been her name, but it wasn’t, anyhow, I’ll tell you the trick she served Pierre Sagesse, and then I’ll tell you the trick he served her.”
All at once the brain of Gaspard, drowsed by the events of the day, cleared, perception became acute, sensation beatified, two glasses of strong rum and the Martinique bout which the Captain had given him, had opened for him the door of the Brandy Paradise; the deck-house of La Belle Arlésienne seemed palatial, Sagesse the greatest of men and he, Gaspard Cadillac, the equal of Sagesse.
He held out his glass for more rum.
“And mark you,” said Sagesse as he poured it out, “I got my hold on her in that way, because, mordieu, I remembered those two words she said that night to the mate of the Bayonnaise. They thought I was drunk, but I have never been drunk in my life, and I never forget.”
“Nor I,” said Gaspard, “never been drunk and never forget.” The recollection of Anisette and Yves came up in his mind, and he thumped the table with his fist. “I have served my man out. No, I never forget. Now you listen—” But Sagesse was off on another tack, money business this time, and Gaspard rocking unsteadily in his seat with his eyes injected, the cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his fists clenched on the table before him, sat hearing nothing, glorified in the hideous upset of alcohol, filled with the splendour of his own importance, and tormented on his throne by something, he knew not what, but which took the form of Yves.