Go all over the earth, and you will find man imitating the insect in this particular, that he is the colour of the leaf he was born on. Gaspard was the colour of Provence, and all the coal-dust of the stokehold, the sordidness of the life had not altered his essential colour; the something tragic, something gay, something vivacious, something lazy which is part of the southern land of black shadows, white roads, blue skies, keen mistral, and poignantly scented flowers still clung to his personality.
Even Sagesse shewed something of a trace of this in the exaggeration of his own doings, in his vivacity, and in the flower which he carried in his button-hole when ashore.
But there was little of the child about Sagesse and much of the master. As day followed day, and the working of the vessel shewed itself more and more to Gaspard, astonishment filled him at the extraordinary discipline amidst the hands, and the way Sagesse worked them. When he was out of sight they would shout and chatter amongst themselves, but the instant he appeared silence took the deck as it takes a grove of chattering birds when a hawk appears in the sky overhead. Orders were executed at a run, yet he never swore or raised his voice louder than was necessary; occasionally when a man got in the way, as on the night of Gaspard’s boarding the vessel, he would give him a kick just as a master might kick a dog, but beyond that his rule seemed kindly. They were all Barbadians, these blacks, and English-speaking, with the exception of Jules who was Haitian born, but Sagesse could talk to them fluently in their own language. He could talk four languages, French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese; he had picked the three foreign languages up as a means to trade, and it was to his mastery of them, as much as his own astuteness, that he owed his success in life.
One night, sultry and cloudless with the sea like frosted silver under the starlight and the warm breathing of the wind, Gaspard, going into the deck-house found Sagesse seated at the table before a chart.
“If this wind holds,” said Sagesse, “we should sight Martinique at dawn.” He spoke with his eyes upon the chart, then, looking up: “What do you propose to do when you get there?”
“Oh, as for me I don’t know,” said Gaspard taking a seat opposite the other. “Report myself to the Compagnie Transatlantique—draw what pay is owing to me, and try and get recompense for my kit.”
“Well,” said Sagesse, “if I were in your place, I would let all that slip.”
“How?”
“Ma foi, how?—say nothing, or as little as you can, report yourself, but do not trouble about compensation.”