"There's no foppery in a sailor who has washed his skin in the waters of five or six oceans."
On the following morning, when the sun rose, the wind was still fresh. The Primauguet was moving very quickly, rocking in its course with the supple and vigorous movement of a mighty runner. In the bow the men released from the watch were singing as they made their morning toilet, stripped, resembling, with their muscular arms and shoulders, the statues of ancient Greece; they were washing themselves liberally in cold water; they plunged their head and shoulders into tubs, covered their chests with a white foam of soap and then, turn and turn about, rubbed one another down.
Suddenly they remembered the dead man and their blythe song subsided. For they had just seen the men of the other watch assembling at the order of their officer and lining up in the stern, as if for an inspection. They guessed why and drew near.
A long new plank had been placed crosswise on the nettings, overhanging, making a kind of see-saw over the water, and a sinister thing which seemed very heavy, a sheath of grey canvas which betrayed a human form, had just been brought up from below.
When Barazère was laid on the long new plank, suspended in mid air over the foaming waves, the bonnets of the sailors were all removed in a last salute; a signalman recited a prayer, hands made the sign of the cross—and then, at my command, the plank was tilted and there came the dull sound of a heavy thing plunging into the water.
The Primauguet passed on its way, and the body of Barazère sank into the abyss, immense in depth and extent, of the great ocean.
Then, very softly, as a reproach, I repeated to Yves who was near me, the phrase of the night before:
"It is with men as with beasts: more will come, but . . ."
"Oh!" he replied; "it was not I who said that; it was he." (He—that is to say, Barrada—heard him and turned his head towards us. There were tears in his eyes.)
We looked behind us with uneasiness, at the wake; for it happens sometimes, when the following shark is there, that a stain of blood appears on the surface of the sea.