“Bonjour, missie.”
“How has trade been since I left?”
“Good, missie—Jules has been busy, very busy, for most a month—before that not so good.” He spoke in the Creole patois, soft, fluent, a language that seems made for the lips of children.
Sagesse ordered drinks. When they were on the table he lit a cigar, handed Gaspard another, and then, crossing his legs and suddenly changing his manner:
“Let us talk business,” said he.
“Business?”
“Ma foi, yes; that’s what they call it—business. See here. I want the true story of the gold in that belt. I want to know more about that island, and I want to know something about that treasure-ship.”
When you encounter a tropical centipede the thing that astonishes you most is the way in which it changes form, now effacing itself altogether in some coign of shadow, now drawn out, swollen, vicious, and ready to attack you, now shrunken, drawn together, a mere nothing that, next moment to a touch becomes distended and viciously alive.
The mind of Captain Sagesse seemed to possess this centipede attribute.
Gaspard had imagined the affair of the island done with; he had imagined that with the conclusion of the bargain over the gold pieces Sagesse had passed the matter behind him. He had said nothing about a treasure-ship. The ship of coral in the lagoon had been always present in his mind as a ship that might contain treasure, but he had said nothing about it. How, then, had Sagesse read his thoughts, and why had he not spoken of it before?