The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Then he passed on and found himself in the market-place on the Place du Fort.

Long before light, under the stars, boats from the fishing grounds had been making for St. Pierre, laden with the catch of the night. From Calebasse, Morne Rouge, Marigot, Vauclin, men and animals laden with country produce had come into the city before dusk on the previous evening.

Light was now striking through the trees of the market-place, the stalls were set out and laden, boats had been dragged right up from the shore on rollers, and their flashing cargoes were being unladen right at the stalls, great fish still quivering and jumping with life, an albicore, big almost as a shark, that took three men to lift, blue fish, black fish, silver fish, fish that looked as though carefully painted by hand, fish of all the forms that fish can possibly take, lay exposed on the stalls or were being unladen from the boats.

When Gaspard entered the market the place was in shadow; flowers, fish, fruit were there, merchants to sell them, and people to buy them, but it was like a market-place in dreamland—a shadowy, yet living and moving picture, almost voiceless—. Pelée is holding everything in his mesmeric gloom.

* * * * *

It is morning, yet it is not. Then, almost in a moment everything changes, golden sunbeams stray through the leaves of the trees, the Place du Fort becomes beautiful with bright light and liquid shadow, an unutterably blue sea is born suddenly, and as if by enchantment beneath a sky of unutterable blue. The market-place thrills, fills with voices, it is like a great cage of birds that break into chatter and song at the first touch of sunlight; you can hear the songs of the canotiers from the sea, songs of the fishermen as they haul the last boatful of fish—hale it right through the market, laughing as they sing and followed by naked laughing children; girls’ voices, men’s voices, buyers, sellers, idlers all mix and blend with the fresh voice of the sea. It has a touch of the morning of the world before the smoke of the first cities dimmed the beauty of the dawn, before man had learned to weep and think. Here amidst the tamarinds and the early sunlight of the Place du Fort, for a moment you can catch the blue robe of the past, for a moment you can stand in the market-place of early Alexandria, for a moment you can glimpse the Agora of Athens in her early youth, touch the summer that vanished before Rome flung out her bastions and those legions whose spears reflected the last gleams of the Golden Age.

For a moment—then Finotte flutters before you in her wasp-coloured turban, basket in hand, and beautiful as a butterfly in her striped foulard, and you are back again in St. Pierre.

* * * * *

With these people a man of Gaspard’s class could fraternize and find friends at sight. Touched with the spirit of the place, he laid hold of the gunwale of the last boat and helped to haul her along, the Creole boatman laughing and chattering with him in the patois which he only half understood. He was French and a man from the big ships, evidently out for a spree, that was enough for them. When they had got the boat in position at a corner of the fish market, for the place was divided, the fish and meat being sold at one side, fruit, vegetables, and flowers at the other, they began to sell their fish right from the boat without troubling to put it on a stall.

Heavens! what fish were in that boat, and what a picture they made fresh from the sea and still quivering; frilled, horned, spined, fantastically coloured. Black and red perroquets, souris pink and orange, blue fish, yellow fish, all glittering like jewels; gelatinous masses that came in clinging to the nets, seaweeds. It was as though a great hand had been dipped in the tropical sea bringing up everything it could grasp. One looked for a mermaid—now the boatmen hammering with sticks were calling out their wares, holding up their fish, joking with the crowd; Gaspard joining in, his white teeth and dark eyes flashing, the picture of one of those boatmen one sees on the sea-steps of Naples, only better dressed. He had seized a huge eel and was holding it up, in a moment it was gone, bought, and Pierre-Alphonse—so he had dubbed the chief boatman—nicknaming him with any name that came first into his head, as these men do—was pocketing the coins. Pierre-Alphonse had conducted the barter whilst Gaspard had held the eel, a pretty girl had bought it and carried it off in her basket, and now Pierre-Alphonse seizing a monster shaped like a little barrel, a barrique de vin—thrust it into the new salesman’s hands. “Sell him too, thou man from the sea—Fish! fish! fish! who’ll buy?—all alive and breathing, all fresh from the water, tonne, volant, balaou, all leaping at thee. Hi Dodotte—Pauline, where are you going with your baskets—fill them.” He seemed to know everyone; the little children crowded round, he gave them handfuls of sádines, little white fish, let them pick seaweed out of the boat, patted them on the head, all with his left hand, as it were, whilst with his right hand and the whole energy of his mind and body he continued selling. He was a big man, Pierre-Alphonse, with a big, dark, smiling face good to look at altogether, and evidently a “character” of the market, and a favourite.