Sagesse knew the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic that includes the Bahamas as well, almost, as he knew the heart of the lower order of mankind. He knew from his own knowledge, and leaving the chart aside, that there was only one islet about here from which a boat could drift or be rowed in the course of a day to the point where he had picked up his new acquaintance. He knew the island by sight, too, the clump of seven palm trees, the white sandy beach, and the murderous reefs. He had seen it through the glass several times, in past years. He had counted the palms, seven of them. He never forgot anything; that was partly why from a foremast hand in the French mercantile marine, he had risen to wealth and eminence of a sort. He fetched a pen and inkhorn from the locker, and made just over the islet the form of a tiny cross, then he put the chart, pen and ink back in their places and came on deck.
The moon had risen, still a crescent but strong enough to flood the sea with light. Jules had relieved the man at the wheel, and stood a dusky ghost before the yellow binnacle light, the wind still held and had even strengthened a little, and in the silence of the night the click of the rudder chain, the wash of the water at the bow, and the occasional groan of hemp-rope and block could be heard.
The barquentine seemed talking to herself in an undertone. Old and weary of the sea, dressed in canvas, patched and stained and ill-fitting, barnacled and streaming southern weeds from her copper, she went her way across the moonlit water, steering now, to make the passage between Haiti and Porto Rico; a hag of the ocean groping her way from port to port, now on honest business, now on contraband, from Yucatan to Port of Spain.
CHAPTER XIII
LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE
At about six o’clock the next morning Gaspard awoke from sleep, half stifled by the close air of the little cabin where Sagesse had placed him. The taste of the rum was still in his mouth, and at a stroke, and almost at the return of consciousness, the doings of the past night rose before him—up to a certain point. He remembered the conversation of Sagesse, he remembered taking the belt from his waist and flinging it and the pouch of money on the table, but beyond that point he remembered nothing.
He put his hand to his waist, belt and bag were gone. He put his legs out of the bunk, and was just in the act of getting on his feet when his hand rested on something hard, it was the pouch. It had not been tampered with, he could tell that by the feel, but, to make sure, he opened it and counted the gold pieces by the dim light which shone through the scuttle overhead.
Yes, the twenty-one pieces of gold were there, solid, bright and hard. He put the belt round his waist and buttoning his coat over the pouch came on deck.
La Belle Arlésienne, close hauled under all sail, was making a full eight knots steering S. S. E. with the coast of Haiti a line on the southern horizon. She had altered her course in the night and she lay now with the shoals and reefs south of Turks Island on her port quarter, but nothing of them shewed, for the sea over that way under the newborn sun lay like a blazing gem, a sheet of corrugated crystal, each of whose million, million facets was a mirror; then, round from there to where the bowsprit was poking at the sky above the sea line went the sea, without sail or sign of life deepening in blueness to where the far-off Haitian coast lay hyacinth coloured in the morning.