He spent a lot of his time on board, going down early, coming up at midday “pour manger la soupe,” and sleeping on board almost every night. He did not like to leave the tartane alone for so many hours. Often, having climbed a little way up to the house, he would turn round for a last look at her in the gathering dusk, and actually would go back again. After Michel had been enlisted for a crew and had taken his abode on board for good, Peyrol found it a much easier matter to spend his nights in the lantern-like room at the top of the farmhouse.
Often waking up at night he would get up to look at the starry sky out of all his three windows in succession, and think: “Now there is nothing in the world to prevent me getting out to sea in less than an hour.” As a matter of fact it was possible for two men to manage the tartane. Thus Peyrol’s thought was comfortingly true in every way, for he loved to feel himself free, and Michel of the lagoon, after the death of his depressed dog, had no tie on earth. It was a fine thought which somehow made it quite easy for Peyrol to go back to his four-poster and resume his slumbers.
VIII
Perched sideways on the circular wall bordering the well, in the full blaze of the midday sun, the rover of the distant seas and the fisherman of the lagoon, sharing between them a most surprising secret, had the air of two men conferring in the dark. The first word that Peyrol said was, “Well?”
“All quiet,” said the other.
“Have you fastened the cabin door properly?”
“You know what the fastenings are like.”
Peyrol could not deny that. It was a sufficient answer. It shifted the responsibility on to his shoulders, and all his life he had been accustomed to trust to the work of his own hands, in peace and in war. Yet he looked doubtfully at Michel before he remarked:
“Yes, but I know the man too.”
There could be no greater contrast than those two faces; Peyrol’s clean, like a carving of stone, and only very little softened by time, and that of the owner of the late dog, hirsute, with many silver threads, with something elusive in the features and the vagueness of expression of a baby in arms. “Yes, I know the man,” repeated Peyrol. Michel’s mouth fell open at this, a small oval set a little crookedly in the innocent face.