Gaspard, though a man full-grown and a man, moreover, who had passed his life in touch with the brutal side of things, had still in his nature very much of the child. The Proven?al rarely grows old, he withers at last in the sun and comes to die, but the child in him remains a child; imaginative, impulsive, easily moved to laughter or tears, good or naughty, with a passion for colour, and movement, and sound, and exaggeration. And so he remains a poet in his way.

Go all over the earth, and you will find man imitating the insect in this particular, that he is the colour of the leaf he was born on. Gaspard was the colour of Provence, and all the coal-dust of the stokehold, the sordidness of the life had not altered his essential colour; the something tragic, something gay, something vivacious, something lazy which is part of the southern land of black shadows, white roads, blue skies, keen mistral, and poignantly scented flowers still clung to his personality.

Even Sagesse shewed something of a trace of this in the exaggeration of his own doings, in his vivacity, and in the flower which he carried in his button-hole when ashore.

But there was little of the child about Sagesse and much of the master. As day followed day, and the working of the vessel shewed itself more and more to Gaspard, astonishment filled him at the extraordinary discipline amidst77 the hands, and the way Sagesse worked them. When he was out of sight they would shout and chatter amongst themselves, but the instant he appeared silence took the deck as it takes a grove of chattering birds when a hawk appears in the sky overhead. Orders were executed at a run, yet he never swore or raised his voice louder than was necessary; occasionally when a man got in the way, as on the night of Gaspard’s boarding the vessel, he would give him a kick just as a master might kick a dog, but beyond that his rule seemed kindly. They were all Barbadians, these blacks, and English-speaking, with the exception of Jules who was Haitian born, but Sagesse could talk to them fluently in their own language. He could talk four languages, French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese; he had picked the three foreign languages up as a means to trade, and it was to his mastery of them, as much as his own astuteness, that he owed his success in life.

One night, sultry and cloudless with the sea like frosted silver under the starlight and the warm breathing of the wind, Gaspard, going into the deck-house found Sagesse seated at the table before a chart.

“If this wind holds,” said Sagesse, “we should sight Martinique at dawn.” He spoke with his eyes upon the chart, then, looking up: “What do you propose to do when you get there?”

“Oh, as for me I don’t know,” said Gaspard taking a seat opposite the other. “Report myself to the Compagnie Transatlantique—draw what pay is owing to me, and try and get recompense for my kit.”

“Well,” said Sagesse, “if I were in your place, I would let all that slip.”

“How?”

“Ma foi, how?—say nothing, or as little as you can, report yourself, but do not trouble about compensation.”

78 “And why?”

Sagesse laughed, “Because my friend, it is not well to stir muddy water; you get before one of these infernal clerks with a pen in his hand, and he takes notes of what you say, you ask for compensation and he says, ‘Yes, yes, that is just, compensation, certainly, but first my friend, prove yourself to be whom you say you are, and give us your story in detail.’ Then with the point of his pen he turns you inside out and,” said Sagesse tapping on the table with his thumb, “it is not well to be turned inside out if one has anything to conceal.”

“To conceal?”

“For instance,” went on Sagesse, “the official of the Compagnie Transatlantique might say, ‘Who was your engineer-in-chief, who was your second engineer, had you a chum, what was his name?’”. Sagesse watching Gaspard narrowly saw the sweat start on his forehead, laughed, and finished, “and you would not say, ‘His name is Yves, he escaped with me, we landed on an island, he had a belt about his waist and a pouch containing a number of valuable gold coins which he had stolen, and I killed him and took the money.’ You would not say that, perhaps, with your tongue, but your face might give a hint, or your manner, and a hint might lead to a suspicion, and a suspicion to a search—you should have burned that body.”

Gaspard, staring at the man before him, felt as though an ice-cold blade had been driven through his heart, his flesh crawled. He had told all, then, to this man, and more than all. He felt nothing of what the criminal feels whose crime has been discovered, for he felt himself innocent of crime or criminal intent. It was the horror of the fact that he had given himself away, and under the influence of drink had described the affair in such a manner79 that Sagesse believed him a murderer—this it was that paralysed him for the moment.

For a moment only, then, thrusting his hands out as though he were putting something away from him, he burst out, “I did not kill him for money—it’s a lie. If I said so I lied—it was an accident. True, we quarrelled about the money, but I did not kill him for it. The knife only scratched him and he dropped. I had saved his life; does a man murder another whose life he has saved? When I spoke, I was mad with your cursed drink. If I had murdered him would I have told of it? I did not kill him for money—do you believe me?”

“My friend,” replied Sagesse quite unmoved, “I believe you. But you yourself admit the fact that you killed him.”

“Yes, by accident.”

“And took his money?”

“It did not belong to him. He had only just found it amid............