broken bits of gold like the twigs from which jewelled fruit had been torn, spinels, peridots, star sapphires, slab-shaped emeralds, cinnamon stones, a black pearl shaped like a pear, diamonds, an enormous turquoise de la vieille roche sun-stricken, coloured, flashing, the treasure of simon serpente lay before gaspard, other treasure there doubtless had been in coin and gold, but this was the cream of it, skimmed by sagesse, selected no doubt during that calm behind which the sailor’s eye had seen the approaching hurricane.
loot from the towns of spanish south america, from ships plundered and scuttled, from women and from altars, all lay here in a confusion of colours. some of these stones absolutely shouted of sacrilege, huge, and splendid, never could they have been worn as jewellery, except by emperors or by jewelled saints in the twilit and incense-laden air of some cathedral. gaspard knew little of precious stones, but a child or a savage would have guessed the worth of this amazing collection of gems. for a moment after he had turned them out of the handkerchief, his breath came in gasps like the breath of a person dashed with cold water. he could not touch them for a moment, it was as though he were afraid of shattering an illusion. then came the thought:
they are mine.
265 he curled his fingers, his lips drew back from his teeth, then he laughed.
they are mine.
he banged his right hand, palm down on the sand beside him, then he clapped his knees with both hands, then, stretching out his hand he seized a wine-coloured amethyst. it was the least valuable stone of the lot, but it was lovely and it lay in his palm like a little lake of colour. he felt its smoothness, turned it about, touched it with his tongue as if he wanted to taste its beauty as well as feel and see it.
it was his, all these things were his and as the thought came back to him he sprang to his feet and with the amethyst in his left hand and his right hand shading his eyes, he looked wildly around him.
yes, he was alone, no one was watching him; no one was there to dispute his possession; the wind blew and the bay-cedar bushes bent before the wind, the sun shone, the sea burned blue and flashed beneath the sun. in all the island world there was no sign or sound of life save the flickering wings of the cormorants on the northern beach and occasionally their cries.
loneliness no longer had terrors for him, the sight of a ship at this moment would have flung him into consternation. he, the man who had flung himself face downward in the tent weeping at the thought that it might be months before a ship sighted the island and took him off to begin his long journey back to martinique and marie, would, had he sighted a sail at this moment, have cursed it.
with the knowledge of possession had come the fear of dispossession. he had not forgotten marie, he had not foregone his desire to return to martinique, but in the first wonderful hours with his treasure, he wished to be alone, to feel it live under his hand, to make plans as to safe disposal,266 to dream for a while the wonderful dream of wealth here, where there was nothing to disturb him but the gulls and the waves.
besides, why should he grieve about marie now? there was nothing to stop him from reaching her, the road was clear before him once he was free from the island, the least of those stones lying there in a glittering heap would give him his passage to martinique from the ends of the earth.
he looked around at the far horizon—not a sail.
as he was standing thus with his hand in his left-hand pocket containing the pocket-book of sagesse which he had not yet examined, he felt something beside the pocket-book. a round, hard disc. it was the coin he had picked out of the treasure pit. rich as he was, this was the only coin in his possession. then, sitting down on the sand beside his treasure, he began to sort the stones, arranging them in lines according to their colour. some were unset, others had still clinging to them some fragments of the settings from which they had been broken.
there were seven rubies, all of the true pigeon-blood colour, the least of these was as large as one’s little finger-nail, the three largest were immense stones as big as the top of an ordinary man’s thumb above a line drawn across the base of the nail; it is only in rubies of the true colour and of this great size that the splendour of precious stones finds its ultimate expression. there is nothing in the inanimate world to approach them in magnificence and beauty.
there were seventeen emeralds, ten quite small and inconsiderable, and seven simply priceless, all save the largest, which was starred and flawed.
he arranged these beneath the rows of rubies. then came the diamonds of which there were forty-eight, not counting the diamond in the ring lying where he had placed267 it by the jewelled snake. some of these diamonds still had the gold of their settings clinging to them, the six largest were the size of hazel nuts and of perfect water. in any market of the world those six diamonds would have fetched thirty thousand pounds and have given a huge profit to the buyer, seven were about half the size of hazel nuts, but of these one was blue and it alone was a little fortune; of the thirty-five remaining three were sherry-coloured and the remainder pure white.
the great turquoise had no companion, he placed it alone on the sand beneath the diamonds, and then, under it, he began to arrange the sapphires; as he was doing it a shadow passed over him, it was the shadow of a frigate bird, flying heavily, gorged with its feast and making south; the same wind on which it was drifting brought with it the clamouring of the cormorants; he rose, glanced around and with dazed eyes looked over the sea, sweeping the horizon; there was no sign of smoke or sail and he sat down again to continue the jewelled pattern on the sand.
he counted the sapphires, two dozen and four there were, varying from cornflower blue to the blue of night, varying in size from the size of a pea to the size of a broad bean. he arranged them between the turquoise. the great amethyst he placed beneath the sapphires, and under the amethyst the spinels, and peridots, of which there were half a handful. the pear-shaped black pearl, the only pearl amidst all these treasures, he placed last.
the white pearl, the ring, and the snake were still lying apart by themselves; besides the stones arranged in lines there were a few fragments of gold, bits of settings, which he disregarded.
then he sat and contemplated the glittering battalions of his treasure. white, red, blue, the blue of the turquoise,268 the wine colour of the amethyst, the black of the pearl, he feasted his eyes on them all. then, turning on his back, shutting his eyes and casting his right hand backwards across them, he laughed.
he could see them almost better with his eyes shut. that was the most delightful and extraordinary moment in his life, it would have been in any man’s life; coloured fortune, real, tangible fortune, fortune in her most beautiful guise at his elbow and the whole blue world before him; what he would do with it all he did not dream; great houses of the wealthy people, snow-white yachts that he had seen in the various parts of the world, the vision of the saloon of the rhone laid out with cut glass and flowers arose before him for a moment; all that belonged to the world of the wealthy, all that world was his now, but he built no imaginary palaces yet, just for the moment the sensation of possession was all powerful, he wanted nothing else.
marie was fully alive and in the background of his mind, and the knowledge that his wealth would enable him to reach her was there and formed part of his satisfaction; but he saw nothing truly yet but the great, blinding light that fortune was flashing in his eyes.
as he lay, the wash of the waves on the desolate beach, the blowing of the wind across the bay-cedar bushes, the crying of the frigate birds and cormorants came to him like sounds heard in a dream.
then the crying of the birds led his thoughts back to yves and yves led him back to the stokehold. he could hear the roar of the furnaces and the boom of the sea, the clatter of the ash lift, the clash of the furnace doors. the vision of fortune had driven all that from his mind. in the last couple of hours, he had passed through an amazing269 development; all the nobility and pride in his nature had been quickened into life, latent powers until now unsuspected were awakening in his being, wealth, and the power of wealth were at his disposal. he felt like some exiled king who had at last come to his own, and then, lo and behold, like some horrible poor relation into his dream stepped the stoker of the rhone. gaspard cadillac, the moco, came to spoil the dreams of gaspard cadillac, the wealthy man. wealth, that thing for which we all crave, had been in his possession scarcely an hour when it hit him a blow.
“hi, there, you dog of a moco, hurry your stumps, down to your furnace, vite!—vite!—vite!”
those words had been shot at him by cuillard, the chief engineer of the rhone as he had come aboard across the messagerie wharf at marseilles before starting. they were nothing to a stoker, but the remembrance of them was bitter now, flame-like hatred against cuillard shot up in his breast, till he remembered that cuillard was silent forever out there where the rhone was lying by the reef to southward. but that thought gave him no relief against the past that cuillard’s words had evoked. that wretched past! no present wealth could atone for all those years of his life and their slavery. yet only a few hours ago that past had seemed not amiss!
truly the lamp of fortune lights many things besides happiness.
he sat up and looked at his hands. they were the hands of a stoker and nothing on earth would make them anything else. he was not ashamed of them, he was not thinking that in the future those hands would proclaim him what he was. no, but he was thinking of the black years those hands had done slave’s work whilst here was lying the270 wealth that would have raised him to a high position in the world. ah! could he have bought those fifteen years back, he would at that moment have given half of the glittering stones to time, utterly forgetting that in that bargain he would have lost a white pearl beyond all earthly jewels—marie.
the wind had been falling and now was little more than a steady breeze, afternoon was upon the island and the sea was falling with the ebbing tide. he gathered his fortune together into the handkerchief that had contained it, then he placed this for extra security into his own handkerchief. he knotted the corners tightly and then placed the little bundle by the stem of the palm tree nearest him; he placed the snake of gold beside the bundle, the ring on his finger, and the great white pearl in his right-hand pocket.
then he remembered sagesse’s pocket-book. he took it out and opened it. it contained only papers all wet with sea water and a note on the bank of france for five hundred francs. he placed the note on the sand with a piece of coral on it to prevent the wind from blowing it away. the sun would dry it. then he tried to examine the papers, they seemed of no use or importance to him, some were letters with the ink all blurred by the sea water, there were insurance certificates, an old theatre bill of a play performed years ago at a new york theatre, and in one packet a photograph with, on the back, the photographer’s name.
nadan, photographer. rue royale, nimes.
it was the photograph of a woman, an old peasant woman to judge by the face and cap. could it have been the man’s mother? as likely as not. and he had prized it evidently or he would not have given it a place in his271 pocket-book. why had he kept the theatre bill? of what romance or villainy was it the reminiscence, of what woman betrayed or man defrauded did he keep it as a memento to be read by gaspard here, where to the crying of the cormorants, the past of man seemed a game futile and filled with derision. a play of shadows—tricking shadows.
he put the photograph and the theatre bill back in the pocket-book, and the papers; then he made a hole in the sand and buried it. to destroy the past of sagesse utterly was the greatest act that gaspard could have performed for humanity, failing that, to bury the records of it was a commendable deed.
he had a flint and steel and the tobacco in his own tobacco box had almost escaped wetting in the drenching of the night before. he filled his pipe and lit it, he had not smoked that day nor the day before and the tobacco, now, had a doubly soothing action on his mind, it chased away the stokehold and his recollections of the past, he forgave sagesse his villainies, it brought the image of marie from away across all those miles of ocean, he saw again the early morning market on the place du fort. pierre-alphonse, m. seguin, and all the gay crowd beneath the blue sky and the dark green tamarinds.
he would find out pierre-alphonse when he returned and buy him a boat of his own, he would set marie’s father up again in business at morne rouge, he would give money to all those people whom sagesse had defrauded, he would make st. pierre happy. that good town where the people had been so good to him. then he would return to montpellier, at least for a time, and take marie with him, they would travel first class in the mail boat. he would go down to the stokehold as passengers sometimes did, ah! the stokers on that ship would have a good time when they272 reached marseilles. he would go to the riga tavern and call for a chopin of wine and see anisette serve it. ah, yves, poor yves, what a pity that he could not take the great, burly breton by the hand and give him a fist full of money—so he lay smoking, playing with coloured shadows, spending phantom gold, whilst the voices of the cormorants half unheard, came on the wind across the bay-cedar bushes and the voices of the waves answered them like eternity making answer to time.
then came the thought, “all that is very well, but how are you to turn your fortune into gold?”
this had not occurred to him before, and at first it seemed a simple matter, just a detail, then he remembered sagesse’s words about governments who were apt to interfere in cases of treasure, men who sprang from nowhere with fictitious claims. sagesse was afraid of these things and sagesse was a clever man with thirty years of experience behind him.
to go to a jeweller with those things would be to admit at once the whole secret; to go to a pawn shop with the smallest of those gems would bring on his head enquiries that might prove fatal.
here was a question to perplex a stoker’s mind. his strong hands could fight to protect his treasure, but of what avail was it to protect a useless thing?
he had read the romance of monte christo, few french sailors have not, the immortal story that has become part of the history of the world was recalled by him here, lost and alone on the desolate islet of whose existence the great dumas had never dreamed.
but it gave him little help. he had lived his life in a more sordid prison than that which held edmund dantès for fourteen years. that black cell of the chateau d’if273 had been illuminated by the mind of faria; the profound intelligence of the abbé had given the future count not only his treasure, but the genius and the worldly knowledge which enabled him to dispose of it and turn it to account. gaspard had no such teaching to guide him. the more he thought of the matter the more did his perplexity increase. the world of a sudden seemed to him peopled with robbers, antagonists, men who would take from him by fraud, or law, the thing which was at once his dream and his possession.
the curse of the imaginative mind came on him with full force, the faculty that had once caused a ghost to haunt him on the islet now filled the world with living people and each person an enemy. he pictured men whom he had never seen, not men of his own class, but men dressed as well-to-do citizens, merchants, and so forth, all sworn enemies to him and eager for his treasure. he had once been in a law court, called as a witness in a shipping disaster case; he saw that court now, and the three judges, he was standing before them and they were questioning him.
“well, where did you get these things? come, now, they are not yours; you do not find these things in a stokehold.”
he sweated at the thought.
sagesse had spoken of taking the stuff to america; he knew nothing of america. martinique was the only place he could take it to, the only place he wanted to reach, and, at once, the remembrance of martinique brought up the image of m. seguin. ah! that was the solution. m. seguin would help him. he had all the worldly knowledge necessary.
for a moment he was satisfied with this way out of the274 difficulty, and he began to doubt—not to doubt, exactly, but to hold up m. seguin’s image before his mind’s eyes and to question it. “you are a reliable man, i know that, for you are universally respected in st. pierre; but this treasure—look you, it is enormous, and remember, it is all mine; i don’t want to give anyone half shares; i just want some one to turn it into money, letting them take a good profit on the transaction, certainly, but not letting them rob me; would you do this for me? could i trust you?”
the mental image of m. seguin, after the fashion of images, made no reply. that hatful of gems, those blazing diamonds, furious rubies, saint-tempting sapphires, all that coloured temptation, who was there in the world that might not yield to it? only one person that he knew—surely—marie.
ah! could she have peddled them with her other wares, how gladly he would have cast them into her lap without count or toll, but she of all people in the world was most useless for his purpose.
he rose and paced the sands with fortune, like the old man of the sea, on his back; even in his walk up and down the desolate beach he was tethered by his treasure, for he dared not go far from that magnetic bundle lying by the palm bole; it was absurd to feel uneasy, he knew that; there was no person here to steal it; all the same, it held him close to it.
now the sun, which had been steadily sinking, touched the western edge of the sea and spilled his glory upon the water, the blue and windy day died and passed at a stroke to the momentary evening of the tropics, and the evening into night.
