Gaspard looked around him, he could see no sign of Sagesse; a negro dressed in a pair of canvas trousers held by a single suspender, stood at the wheel, several more were grouped round the fo’csle-head engaged on some business, and a thin streak of smoke from the caboose told of breakfast in progress.
From where he stood the deck stretched away unencumbered by cargo, and barred by the shadows of the standing rigging; they had taken the boat on board, and she was lying bottom up on the deck forward of the mainmast.
Despite her age, despite the decks so yellow stained by time that plank and dowel were of the same colour and indistinguishable, despite the sails all cut and patched, the old barquentine had still a look of buoyancy and life caught from the brave morning light and the flooding azure of sea and sky.
The smell of tar and bilge and rope, the groan of rubber and creak of mast brought up for Gaspard the vision of the Tamalpais and his early youth. No other sensation is at all like the feel of a sailing ship beneath one’s feet. The steamer is a dead weight driven by an alien force, its progression is a continual insult to the wind and the sea, but the sailing ship is one with the sea and the wind, her motion is fluent, fresh, and part of the eternal movement of nature. As Gaspard stood with his eyes fixed on the distant Haitian coast, Sagesse came out of the deck-house and gave him good-morning.
The Captain had a telescope in his hand, and ranging himself beside Gaspard he began to examine the coast-line attentively through the glass.
Not a word did he say of the proceedings of the past night. He stood picking out the points and headlands of the coast, remarking on them now and then, and now and then throwing in some piece of reminiscence, as “Over there—you can just see that bluish spot, it goes in deep, the land there—that’s where a big English ship went on the rocks. The Severn in the storm of ’82. I helped in the salving. Ma foi, I have never seen such a big ship with her back so broken. She was opened out like a band-box. She was filled with millinery, too. New York fashions for Jamaica; the rocks were dressed in chiffon, it was like the wreck of the Bon Marché, and the negresses came down to help—you can fancy!” or “That point, you can just see it with the eye to eastward of the blue spot, over there they hanged the last of the pirates, Freemantle—”
“What does he know, what did I say last night. I remember flinging the money on the table, I remember saying something about Yves—but what? Did I say much, did I say little? And the money, he must have picked it up and put it in the pouch, and put the pouch and belt beside me as I lay in the bunk, hog that I was—mordieu—what did I say?” These thoughts were running through Gaspard’s mind as he stood watching his companion and listening to his remarks almost without comprehending them.
But Sagesse, whatever he knew, shewed nothing of his knowledge. He chatted familiarly and easily, and when breakfast was brought aft by Jules they sat down to it, and over the steaming coffee and fried bacon and bananas, the Captain continued his easygoing discourse, chatting on everything and nothing, but always with interest.
The blackguardly edge had gone off his conversation, it was only at night it appeared whetted by alcohol, for Sagesse was a methodical drinker, never glancing at the bottle till the absinthe hour.
Gaspard during the meal made an offer of work, but Sagesse would not hear of it.