The spahi Boyer clasped him in his arms and embraced him. Fatou, still grovelling on the ground, uttered a cry of triumph, then hid her face against Jean’s knees, with a kind of wild animal’s roar, ending in a burst of hysterical laughter, followed by sobs.
XIX
Time was short. Pierre Boyer departed with the same mad haste with which he had come, carrying with him to Goree the precious document to which poor Jean had affixed a true soldier’s signature, large, correct, and legible.
When the last moment arrived, all the papers were in order, countersigned and initialled, the baggage had been transhipped, and the exchange effected. The whole affair had been patched up in such haste that the two spahis had scarcely had time to think.
At three o’clock precisely the mail boat sailed with Pierre Boyer on board.
And Jean remained behind.
XX
But when the thing was done and past recall, when Jean found himself standing there on the sea-shore watching the ship’s departure, a frantic despair seized his heart—a terrible agony, mingled with terror at this thing that he had done; rage against Fatou, a horror of the black girl’s proximity, and a need, as it were, of chasing her from him—together with a newly kindled, immense, and profound love for his cherished home, and the dear ones who were waiting for him there, and whom now he was not to see....
It seemed to him that he had signed a compact to the death with this sombre land, and that this was the end of him.