Within the tropics, on a wondrous evening when the Southern trades were blowing with their balmiest softness, the corporeal portion of his being tired with a healthy muscular fatigue, gently lulled by the slumberous rhythmic motion of the ship, as a little child is rocked to sleep in his cradle, Jean was half sitting, half lying on the deck in the mild light of the new-born stars, in the midst of the gathering swarm of white-jacketed sailor lads, who were coming up from below, one after another, and forming snug little groups preparatory to passing the pleasant hours of evening in one another’s society. And in those moments of calmness and repose that precede slumber his thoughts, as usual, assumed a more sombre cast as the future and that dreaded examination rose before his mind.
Close at hand, on his right, were his two chosen comrades, Le Marec, quartermaster, and Joal, captain of the mizzen-top, both hailing from the Côtes-du-Nord, surrounded at that moment by a group of young pays—or men from their own district—who were listening reverentially to their conversation.
On his left was a little congregation of Basques, a race apart, who every now and then would break out and chatter in an unintelligible jargon, older than the hills.
A little further away another group was singing in chorus a lively air in couplets, in which the refrain: “Old Neptune, Monarch of the Sea,” came in every minute or so in a light, catchy way.
Among the Bretons a blood-curdling, marrow-freezing story of mystery and darkness was going on, the confused beginning of which Jean had failed to catch. The yarn was of a suspicious-looking brig, derelict and abandoned by her crew, that had been encountered in the English Channel in the twilight at the close of a dim winter’s day; a ghostly wanderer on the water that no one dared board for fear of encountering dead men on her.
The Basques of the group to the left were listening to a wild tale of warlike adventure beneath a blazing sun and on the burning sands of Dahomey.
The two stories, equally lurid and fantastic, reached Jean’s ears in disconnected fragments, and were mingled and blended in his brain, over which sleep was beginning to exert its confusing influence, while from the chorus in the distance came the persistently reiterated refrain of “Old Neptune,” running thread-like through the whole and connecting the parts by a sort of obligato accompaniment. There is small opportunity for privacy on shipboard of a fine evening, when the crew are all on deck.
“Well,” Le Marec was saying—he had been a fisherman of Brieuc in his younger days—“well, at last we concluded to board her” (it was of that grewsome derelict that he was speaking). “It was none too light, for the weather was thick and the night was close at hand, and I tell you what it is, boys, I felt pretty shaky about that time. All the same, though, I raise my hands and catch onto the gunwale, so as to hoist myself up and get a look at what was inside—and then, my friends, what think you it is I see? A huge, tall form, with black face, and horns, and a long, pointed beard, that springs to its feet and makes a rush for me—”
“It was the Devil, wasn’t it?” asked Joal, convinced that he had guessed aright.