The priest, leaving Yingching at daybreak, sent no word to the wife, but went away happy in that nameless credulity, which belongs ordinarily to neither man nor woman, but only to children or such as he. And yet the Breton was not to blame, for happiness was the cause of it. Many weeks had already passed since the wife had opened the wicket and had come down to sit beside him—weeks that had vanished with the brevity of a dream.
Each day she fluttered for a moment on the threshold, then came down and seated herself near him; but it always remained as the first day, a vision, a tremor, a silence. The wife sat with her back to him, and not often did the Breton dare to raise his eyes nor even glance furtively at the beautiful contour of her neck and shoulders, nor at the delicate bloom that crept back from her cheek. But sometimes there was a quick turning of her head, a flash of light—then he trembled.
The happiness of all this nearness, stillness, and flashes brought about no change in the outward demeanour of the Breton. There is but little difference in appearance of a torrent at half flood and nearly at full flood. Only the beginnings and what ensues from it are noticed. The flood was still rising, and when the Breton was sent by the bishop to the wild Bay of Tai Wan, he left as he had remained during the past weeks, dreaming, without smiles, joyous, silent.
The priest’s journey was distant, and his stay among these turbulent sea-dwellers had been long; but he had much to do to keep him busy; much to remember and dream about, which kept him happy.
The people had received him with scowls, suspicion, and threats. In the market place of Hsia Wan a rock thrown at him struck a boy hooting by his side. He dressed the wound. Crossing a narrow islet to the village of Yat Ho, his boat was purposely overturned; without a word of remonstrance or show of concern, he paid the boatman and went on his way. At midnight he passed through the tiger-infested woods of Foshui and Sanshu from Tai Po to the hut of the fisher. In this way it was not long before his dreaminess was construed into fearlessness and admired by those amphibious bandits of the bay. And whomever a Chinese pirate admires men should stand in awe of or look upon him as a child.
The Breton went about his duties without cessation except at dusk, and then, when those about him had ceased their labours, he would seek the solitude of the sea-bank as he had that of the river. It is doubtful if he perceived that instead of the great city with its lessening but varied noises there were behind him mountains down whose desolate sides came gloom instead of twilight, while the only sounds that rose from them were the bark of jackal and scream of night-bird. Not after the hour of sundown were to be heard at all the hard noises of labour, nor the wild mutter of these sea-dwellers in their daily life. When the evening guns had boomed from the walls of their villages and from their low long boats at anchorage had come the last roll of kettle-drum, the clash of cymbals, and burst of crackers, a deep silence brooded over all except cries from the mountains and the sea’s muffled splash.
As dusk deepens this Bay of Tai Wan takes on a terror of its own. By day its waters are a reddish-brown, and its wave-crests look like yellow floss; by night it is black, and its wave-crests flashes of fire. This strange phenomenon is due to the fact that the sea along this coast teems with phosphorescent protozoa, making it a red-brown by day, and when night falls there is seen in every movement of the waters a glint of green fire. Wave-crests moving shoreward are as an endless flight of monstrous fire-flies. Where the sea breaks on the wash and rocks the spray becomes a shower of green sparks, so that the shore-line burns with a cold, livid fire. Among the flame-crests are seen zig-zag lines—the fiery trace of shark fins. Sometimes a green coal glows in the blackness, a tortoise floating in the break of the sea; sometimes a swarm of flying fishes rise from the waves, their scales and membranous wings adrift with a green fire, and for a moment their flight is ghastly. Looking down the edge of a cliff the shallow sea is filled with monsters aflame. Man never witnessed a more horrible sight than the sea at Tai Wan by night. Nothing that moves escapes the clinging protozoa: fish darting through the blackness have every scale, spine, maw, and tooth covered with this ghastly glow; the hairy legs and bodies of sea-spiders, their protruding eyes and fangs glitter in frightful luminosity; gleaming snakes glance through the depths. Squids sometimes hide their fire-covered bodies in a black vomit, but crustacea, sea-toads, and larvæ all burning in this livid fire wriggle about under the black waters.
It was over this sea that the Breton dreamed and was joyous; it was by this sea that he buried the derelict whose chain and Seal he wore under his robe—a promise to the dead, but in due time to be more precious to him than all the jewels that have bedecked men, and more powerful than Empires.
The Breton once more stood before the screen, eager, hesitant; straining his ears for the music of a silken rustle; his eyes for one pink finger-tip. He waited a long time, but heard nothing, nor saw even one little finger resting shyly in a crevice.