... About them deepened the enormous silence of the sea;—low swung the sun again. The horizon was yellowing: day had begun to fade. Tall Dominica was now half green; but there yet appeared no smoke, no sail, no sign of life.
And the tints of the two vast Shapes that shattered the rim of the light shifted as if evanescing,—shifted like tones of West Indian fishes,—of pisquette and congre,—of caringue and gouôs-zié and balaou. Lower sank the sun;—cloud-fleeces of orange pushed up over the edge of the west;—a thin warm breath caressed the sea,—sent long lilac shudderings over the flanks of the swells. Then colors changed again: violet richened to purple;—greens blackened softly;—grays smouldered into smoky gold.
And the sun went down.
VII
And they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the ghostly fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible but the high stars.
Black hours passed. From minute to minute Maximilien cried out:—"Sucou! sucou!" Stéphane lay motionless and dumb: his feet, touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt singularly cold.
... Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,—knocked heavily—making a hollow loud sound. It was not Stéphane;—Stéphane lay still as a stone: it was from the depth below. Perhaps a great fish passing.
It came again,—twice,—shaking the canoe like a great blow. Then Stéphane suddenly moved,—drew up his feet a little,—made as if to speak:—"Ou..."; but the speech failed at his lips,—ending in a sound like the moan of one trying to call out in sleep;—and Maximilien's heart almost stopped beating.... Then Stéphane's limbs straightened again; he made no more movement;—Maximilien could not even hear him breathe.... All the sea had begun to whisper.
A breeze was rising;—Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All at once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,—that he did not care what might happen. He thought about a cricket he had one day watched in the harbor,—drifting out with the tide, on an atom of dead bark,—and he wondered what had become of it. Then he understood that he himself was the cricket,—still alive. But some boy had found him and pulled off his legs. There they were,—his own legs, pressing against him: he could still feel the aching where they had been pulled off; and they had been dead so long they were now quite cold.... It was certainly Stéphane who had pulled them off....
The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and over again,—louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear. But he heard it very well:—"Bon-Dié, li conm vent... li ka touché nou... nou pa save ouè li." (But why had the Bon-Dié shaken the wind?) "Li pa ka tint zié," answered the water.... Ouille!—He might all the same care not to upset folks in the sea!... Mi!...