By eight o’clock the islands were just palms low down on the sea, swimming in an azure haze; they had vanished completely before noon.
Not a word had been said by Sagesse about Pedro, and Gaspard imagined that the captain held off the subject under the impression that he (Gaspard) had forgotten the Porto Rican’s existence.
There was something almost uncanny in this vanishing of a man and the utter indifference of all on board. Imagination embroidered upon the situation and asked questions not the less disturbing because they were unanswerable.
Had the wretched man died in his bunk, delirious from brain fever following the injury, or had he been flung overboard before death?
The imaginative mind of Gaspard found much to play with in this idea. He pictured the business done in the small hours of the morning, whilst he was asleep. He dreamed of it at night.
Pedro became an obsession with him, just as the dead Yves had become an obsession on the island. What had happened to this man whom he had seen alive and well, yet who had gone off the ship without a word?
He knew that Pedro had been killed by the blow of the216 belaying-pin, just as on the island he had known that Yves was dead amidst the bushes; but imagination takes little heed of facts once she gets rein, and incessantly he was haunted by the idea of the vanished man; the chanty he had been singing in his delirium clung like a ghostly echo to the ship.
This trouble of the imagination was not eased by the conditions of his life on board, the absolute idleness and the presence at all times of Sagesse. He was passing swiftly from dislike to hatred of Sagesse.
On this day of their passing the Virgin Islands his ill-temper and irritability had come to a crisis, and it was only by keeping away from his companion that he could hold himself in check. He had been silent at breakfast, but the Captain did not seem to notice his silence. All during the morning he had kept as much as possible to himself, smoking, leaning over the side, watching the indigo-blue water swirling past, the flakes of foam, the flying-fish, the sun dazzles, the floating seaweeds. There were tiny fish following La Belle Arlésienne close to the rudder, as if for protection; sometimes these would dart away from the ship and back again, needle-bright and swift. A glancing blue and gold form appeared and hovered for a moment in view; beneath it appeared what seemed the trace of a sand-spit, vague, misty, and moving as though to keep pace with the ship. It was a shark, and the blue and gold angel of the sea was its pilot. They vanished. Sharks do not follow nigger ships, they say. Gaspard did not know or care; he watched the depths like a man mesmerised, seeing, scarcely seeing, not caring what he saw. He was thinking of Marie,—Marie of Morne Rouge, from whom this cursed ship was taking him moment by moment further away and against his will.
217 He was brought back from his thoughts by one bell striking and by the shadow of the cook bearing dinner from the galley to the deck-house.
Canned beef stewed with carrots formed the repast, with the eternal bananas of the tropics. Sagesse was hungry, and therefore silent. Gaspard was silent, but he was not hungry.
The sight of this man, whom he was beginning to loathe, at his food would have taken his appetite away had he possessed one. The meal went on in silence, and Sagesse was pushing his plate away, and had reached out his hand for the bottle to fill his glass, when Gaspard leaned across the table.
“I counted the crew when I came on board,” said Gaspard, “and it seems to me that I made a mistake.”
“How so?” asked Sagesse, helping himself from the bottle.
“I counted eleven hands which, with you and me, would make thirteen souls on board.”
“Well,” said Sagesse, helping himself from the glass, “what of that?”
“Thirteen was an unlucky number.”
“So you believe in that nonsense?”
“Do not you?”
“No.”
“Well, look—what has happened since we started?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
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