That night when Gaspard was on deck, smoking a pipe before turning in, he heard the sound of laughter coming from away forward.

There was no light on deck but the light of the binnacle lamp and a glimmer from a crack in the deck-house door which was closed, and out of the darkness away forward came this sudden shock of laughter, not loud, but hard, mirthless, and inhuman.

If a fiend had dropped from the sky and stridden the bowsprit, he might have emitted such a laugh at La Belle Arlésienne, her captain, her crew, and her venture before putting his blight upon the vessel and whooping into the sea.

Gaspard glanced at the steersman. He was a big negro, naked to his waist in the hot night, a colossal figure touched by the binnacle light. Whether he heard or whether he did not hear it was impossible to say; he shewed neither sign nor movement, with the exception of the movement of the great right hand upon the wheel spoke, now visible, now fleeting into darkness.

“Pardieu!” muttered Gaspard to himself, “the fellow that made that laugh would not make the pleasantest companion. Let us listen—”

He leaned on the bulwark rail.

The hot southeast trade wind coming out of the velvety209 darkness whispered in the shrouds and set the reef points pattering; the warm, windy, starry night had a perfume more than the perfume of the sea; some trace of scent from the gardens and forests of Dominica, some hint of the spices of Guadaloupe hung on the skirts of the wind.

Then, all of a sudden, from forward came again the voice, not laughing this time.
A Fort de France, Ay ho!
A Fort de France, Ay ho!
Bonjour Doudoux, Ay ho!
A Fort de France.
A Fort de France,
Ay ho!

The chanty of the negroes when they were breaking the cargo out of La Belle Arlésienne sung by that single cracked voice. Now, the negro sailor, or the white, for the matter of that, never sings a working chanty for the pleasure of the thing............