The wives of the fishermen admired his boldness, for Peyrol indeed appeared to them a very formidable being.
“I might have guessed that,” thought Peyrol. “She is in a dreadful mess.” The disturbed gull had brought some friends as indignant as itself and they circled at different levels uttering wild cries over Peyrol’s head. He shouted again:
“Who does she belong to?”
The being on crutches lifted a finger towards the circling birds and answered in a deep tone:
“They are the only ones I know.” Then, as Peyrol gazed down at him over the side, he went on: “This craft used to belong to Escampobar. You know Escampobar? It’s a house in the hollow between the hills there.”
“Yes, I know Escampobar,” yelled Peyrol, turning away and leaning against the mast in a pose which he did not change for a long time. His immobility tired out the crowd. They moved slowly in a body towards their hovels, the hunchback bringing up the rear with long swings between his crutches, and Peyrol remained alone with the angry gulls. He lingered on board the tragic craft which had taken Arlette’s parents to their death in the vengeful massacre of Toulon and had brought the youthful Arlette and Citizen Scevola back to Escampobar, where old Catherine, left alone at that time, had waited for days for somebody’s return. Days of anguish and prayer, while she listened to the booming of guns about Toulon and with an almost greater but different terror to the dead silence which ensued.
Peyrol, enjoying the sensation of some sort of craft under his feet, indulged in no images of horror connected with that desolate tartane. It was late in the evening before he returned to the farm, so that he had to have his supper alone. The women had retired, only the sans-culotte, smoking a short pipe out of doors, had followed him into the kitchen and asked where he had been and whether he had lost his way. This question gave Peyrol an opening. He had been to Madrague and had seen a very fine tartane lying perishing on the beach.
“They told me down there that she belonged to you, citoyen.”
At this the terrorist only blinked.
“What’s the matter? Isn’t she the craft you came here in? Won’t you sell her to me?” Peyrol waited a little. “What objection can you have?”