Gaspard exhausted, falling into the third stage of intoxication, was leaning now over the table, his eyelids drooping, the cigar end, no longer alight, held loosely in his nerveless fingers.
“Yves—and what rating was he?”
“Stoker.”
“So—but he had another name, he was not only called Yves?”
“What you say?” asked Gaspard, rousing slightly.
Sagesse repeated his question, but the man at the table did not seem to comprehend, then, stricken with sleep he sank completely forward, his head resting right cheek down on the table, his right hand on the pouch containing the money. Sagesse looked at him for a moment contemplatively, then he went to the door and cried, “Jules.” A shuffling sound came along the deck, and a big negro, bare-footed and bare-breasted, with his wool all tied up in little knots, made his appearance at the door.
Sagesse pointed to the man at the table, and Jules with a broad grin but without a word, entered and took the dreamer by the shoulders, Sagesse took him by the feet, and between them they carried him to the starboard dog hole, which did duty for a mate’s cabin when a mate was on board. Here they put him in the bunk, Sagesse placed the belt and pouch of money in the bunk beside him, then they closed the door on him and left him to his slumbers.
When Sagesse found himself alone, he took a chart from a locker, spread it on the table and pored over it.
Gaspard had told him that he had only been drifting since morning. If this were so, if the man were not lying, and if, indeed, he had left an island that morning, then the only island he possibly could have left was here marked on the chart, a tiny island reef beset to North, South, and East; eighty miles or so southeast of Turks Island.