The Man Who Laughs Page 9

  This chief of the band, the captain and the Hugo men of the crew, all four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque, sometimes Spanish, sometimes French--these three languages being common on both slopes of the Pyrenees. But generally speaking, excepting the women, all talked something like French, which was the foundation of their slang. The French language about this period began to be chosen by the peoples as something intermediate between the excess of consonants in the north, and the excess of vowels in the south. In Europe, French was the language of commerce, and also of felony. It will be remembered that (Libby, a London thief, understood Cartouche.

  The hooker, a fine sailer, was making quick way; still, ten persons, besides their baggage, were a heavy cargo for one of such light draught.

  The fact of the vessel's aiding the escape of a band did not necessarily imply that the crew were accomplices. It was sufficient that the captain of the vessel was a Vascongado, and that the chief of the band was another. Among that race mutual assistance is a duty which admits of no exception. A Basque, as we have said, is neither Spanish nor French; he is Basque, and always and everywhere he must succour a Basque. Such is Pyrenean fraternity.

  All the time the hooker was in the gulf, the sky, although threatening, did not frown enough to cause the fugitives any uneasiness. They were flying, they were escaping, they were brutally gay. One laughed, another sang; the laugh was dry but free, the song was low but careless.

  The Languedocian cried, "Caoucagno!" Cocagne! expresses the highest pitch of satisfaction in Narbonne. He was a longshore sailor, a native of the waterside village of Gruissan, on the southern side of the Clappe, a bargeman rather than a mariner, but accustomed to work the reaches of the inlet of Pages, and to draw the dragnet full of fish over the salt sands of St. Lucie. He was of the race who wear a red cap, make complicated signs of the cross after the Spanish fashion, drink wine out of goat-skins, eat scraped ham, kneel down to blaspheme, and implore their patron saint with threats:--"Great saint, grant me what I ask, or I'll throw a stone at thy head, ou té feg um pic." He might be, at need, a useful addition to the crew.

  The Provençal in the caboose was blowing up a turf fire under an iron pot, and making broth. The broth was a kind of puchero, in which fish took the place of meat, and into which the Provençal threw chick peas, little bits of bacon cut in squares, the pods of red pimento; concessions made by the eaters of bouillabaisse to the eaters of olla podrida. One of the bags of provisions was beside him unpacked. He had lighted over his head an iron lantern, glazed with talc, which swung on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, on another hook, swung the weather-cock halcyon. There was a popular belief in those days that a dead halcyon, hung by the beak, always turned its breast to the quarter whence the wind was blowing. While he made the broth, the Provençal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, and now and then swallowed a draught of aguardiente. It was one of those gourds covered with wicker, broad and gal, with handles, which used to be hung to the side by a strap, and which were then called hip-gourds. Between each gulp he mumbled one of those country songs of which the subject is nothing at all: a hollow road, a hedge; you see in the meadow, through a gap in the bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart, elongated in the sunset, and from time to time, above the hedge, the end of a fork loaded with hay appears and disappears--you want no more to make a song.

  A departure, according to the bent of one's mind, is a relief or a depression. All seemed lighter in spirits excepting the old man of the band, the man with the hat that had no pipe.

  This old man, who looked more German than anything else, although he had one of those unfathomable faces in which nationality is lost, was bald, and so grave that his baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he passed before the Virgin on the prow, he raised his felt hat, so that you could see the swollen and senile veins of his skull. A sort of full gown, torn and threadbare, of brown Dorchester serge, but half hid his closely fitting coat, tight, compact, and hooked up to the neck like a cassock. His hands inclined to cross each other, and had the mechanical junction of habitual prayer. He had what might be called a wan countenance; for the countenance is above all things a reflection, and it is an error to believe that idea is colourless. That countenance was evidently the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of one who was less and more than human--capable of falling below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable in that face. Its secret reached the abstract. You felt that the man had known the foretaste of evil which is the calculation, and the aftertaste which is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted two petrifactions: the petrifaction of the heart proper to the hangman, and the petrifaction of the mind proper to the mandarin. One might have said (for the monstrous has its mode of being complete), that all things were possible to him, even emotion. In every savant there is something of the corpse, and this man was a savant. Only to see him you caught science imprinted in the gestures of his body and in the folds of his dress. His was a fossil face, the serious cast of which was counteracted by that wrinkled mobility of the polyglot which verges on grimace. But a severe man withal; nothing of the hypocrite, nothing of the cynic. A tragic dreamer. He was one of those whom crime leaves pensive; he had the brow of an incendiary tempered by the eyes of an archbishop. His sparse gray locks turned to white over his temples. The Christian was evident in him, complicated with the fatalism of the Turk. Chalkstones deformed his fingers, dissected by leanness. The stiffness of his tall frame was grotesque. He had his sea-legs, he walked slowly about the deck, not looking at any one, with an air decided and sinister. His eyeballs were vaguely filled with the fixed light of a soul studious of the darkness and afflicted by reapparitions of conscience.

  From time to time the chief of the band, abrupt and alert, and making sudden turns about the vessel, came to him and whispered in his ear. The old man answered by a nod. It might have been the lightning consulting the night.

  * * *

  III

  TROUBLED MEN ON THE TROUBLED SEA

  TWO MEN on board the craft were absorbed in thought--the old man and the skipper of the hooker, who must not be mistaken for the chief of the band. The captain was occupied by the sea, the old man by the sky. The former did not lift his eyes from the waters; the latter kept watch on the firmament. The skipper's anxiety was the state of the sea; the old man seemed to suspect the heavens. He scanned the stars through every break in the clouds.

  It was the time when day still lingers, but some few stars begin faintly to pierce the twilight. The horizon was singular. The mist upon it varied. Haze predominated on land, clouds at sea.

  The skipper, noting the rising billows, hauled all taut before he got outside Portland Bay. He would not delay so doing until he should pass the headland. He examined the rigging closely, and satisfied himself that the lower shrouds were well set up, and supported firmly the futtock-shrouds; precautions of a man who means to carry on with a press of sail, at all risks.

  The hooker was not trimmed, being two foot by the head. This was her weak point.

  The captain passed every minute from the binnacle to the standard compass, taking the bearings of objects on shore. The Matutina had at first a soldier's wind which was not unfavourable, though she could not lie within five points of her course. The captain took the helm as often as possible, trusting no one but himself to prevent her from dropping to leeward, the effect of the rudder being influenced by the steerage-way.

  The difference between the true and apparent course, being relative to the way on the vessel, the hooker seemed to lie closer to the wind than she did in reality. The breeze was not a-beam, nor was the hooker close-hauled; but one can not ascertain the true course made, except when the wind is abaft. When you perceive long streaks of clouds meeting in a point on the horizon, you may be sure th
at the wind is in that quarter; but this evening the wind was variable; the needle fluctuated; the captain distrusted the erratic movements of the vessel. He steered carefully but resolutely, luffed her up, watched her coming to, prevented her from yawing, and from running into the wind's eye: noted the leeway, the little jerks of the helm: was observant of every roll and pitch of the vessel, of the difference in her speed, and of the variable gusts of wind. For fear of accidents he was constantly on the lookout for squalls from off the land he was hugging, and above all he was cautious to keep her full; the direction of the breeze indicated by the compass being uncertain from the small size of the instrument. The captain's eyes, frequently lowered, remarked every change in the waves.

  Once, nevertheless, he raised them toward the sky, and tried to make out the three stars of Orion's belt. These stars are called the three magi, and an old proverb of the ancient Spanish pilots declares that, "He who sees the three magi is not far from the Saviour."

  This glance of the captain's tallied with an aside growled out, at the other end of the vessel, by the old man. "We don't even see the pointers, nor the star Antares, red as he is. Not one is distinct."

  No care troubled the other fugitives.

  Still, when the first hilarity they felt in their escape had passed away, they could not help remembering that they were at sea in the month of January, and that the wind was frozen. It was impossible to establish themselves in the cabin. It was much too narrow and too much encumbered by bales and baggage. The baggage belonged to the passengers, the bales to the crews for the hooker was no pleasure boat, and was engaged in smuggling. The passengers were obliged to settle themselves on deck, a condition to which these wanderers easily resigned themselves. Open-air habits make it simple for vagabonds to arrange themselves for the night. The open air (la belle étoile) is their friend, and the cold helps them to sleep--sometimes to die.

  This night, as we have seen, there was no belle étoile.

  The Languedocian and the Genoese, while waiting for supper, rolled themselves up near the women, at the foot of the mast, in some tarpaulin which the sailors had thrown them.

  The old man remained at the bow motionless, and apparently insensible to the cold.

  The captain of the hooker, from the helm where he was standing, uttered a sort of guttural call somewhat like the cry of the American bird called the exclaimer; at his call the chief of the band drew near, and the captain addressed him thus:

  "Etcheco Jaüna." These two words, which mean "tiller of the mountain," form with the old Cantabri a solemn preface to any subject which should command attention.

  Then the captain pointed the old man out to the chief, and the dialogue continued in Spanish; it was not, indeed, a very correct dialect, being that of the mountains. Here are the questions and answers:

  "Etcheco jaüna, que es este hombre?"

  "Un hombre."

  "Que lenguas habla?"

  "Todas."

  "Que cosas sabe?"

  "Todas."

  "Qual païs?,'

  "Ningun, y todos."

  "Qual dios?"

  "Dios."

  "Como le llamas?"

  "El tonto."

  "Como dices que le llamas?"

  "El sabio."

  "En vuestre tropa que esta?"

  "Esta lo que esta."

  "El gefe?"

  "No."

  "Pues que esta?"

  "La alma." [1]

  The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his own meditation, and a little while afterward the Matutina left the gulf.

  Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean in the spaces between the foam was slimy in appearance. The waves seen through the twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here and there a wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of glass broken by stones; in the centre of these stars, in a revolving orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that feline reflection of vanished light which shines in the eye-balls of owls.

  Proudly, like a bold swimmer, the Matutina crossed the dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier, it is an amphitheatre--a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves--an arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau--only drowned--a coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency which engulfs him, such is the Shambles shoal. There hydras fight, leviathans meet. There, says the legend, at the bottom of the gigantic shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized and sunk by the huge spider Kraken, also called the fish-mountain. Such things lie in the fearful shadow of the sea.

  These spectral realities, unknown to man, are manifested at the surface by a slight shiver.

  In this nineteenth century, the Shambles bank is in ruins; the breakwater recently constructed has overthrown and mutilated, by the force of its surf, that high submarine architecture, just as the jetty, built at the Croisic in 1760, changed, by a quarter of an hour, the courses of the tides. And yet the tide is eternal. But eternity obeys man more than man imagines.

  [1] Tiller of the mountain, who is that man?--A man.

  What tongue does he speak?--All.

  What things does he know?--All.

  What is his country?--None at all.

  Who is his God?--God.

  What do you call him?--The madman.

  What do you say you call him?--The wise man.

  In your band what is he?--He is what he is.

  The chief?--No.

  Then what is he?--The soul.

  * * *

  IV

  A CLOUD DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS ENTERS ON THE SCENE

  THE OLD MAN whom the chief of the band had named first the Madman, then the Sage, now never left the forecastle. Since they crossed the Shambles shoal, his attention had been divided between the heavens and the waters. He looked down, he looked upward, and above all watched the northeast.

  The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, stopped over the after hatchway, crossed the gangway, and went on to the forecastle. He approached the old man, but not in front. He stood a little behind, with elbows resting on his hips, with outstretched hands, the head on one side, with open eyes and arched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of his mouth, an attitude of curiosity hesitating between mockery and respect.

  The old man, either that it was his habit to talk to himself, or that hearing some one behind incited him to speech, began to soliloquise while he looked into space:

  "The Meridian, from which the right ascension is calculated, is marked in this century by four stars--the Polar Cassiopeia's Chair, Andromeda's Head, and the star Al-genib, which is in Pegasus. But there is not one visible."

  These words followed each other mechanically, confused, and scarcely articulated, as if he did not care to pronounce them. They floated out of his mouth and dispersed. Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost fires of the soul.

  The skipper broke in, "My lord!"

  The old man, perhaps rather deaf as well as very thoughtful, went on:

  "Too few stars and too much wind. The breeze continually changes its direction and blows inshore; thence it rises perpendicularly. This results from the land being warmer than the water. Its atmosphere is lighter. The cold and dense wind of the sea rushes in to replace it. From this cause, in the upper regions the wind blows toward the land from every quarter. It would be advisable to make long tacks between the true and apparent parallel. When the latitude by observation differs from the latitude by dead reckoning, by not more than three minutes in thirty miles, or by four minutes in sixty miles, you are in the true course."

  The skipper bowed, but the old man saw him not. The latter, who wore what resembled an Oxford or Göttingen University gown, did not relax his haughty and rigid attitude. He observed the waters as a critic of waves and of men. He studied the billows, but almost as if he was about to demand his turn to speak amid their turmoil, and teach them something. There was in h
im both pedagogue and soothsayer. He seemed an oracle of the deep.

  He continued his soliloquy, which was perhaps intended to be heard.

  "We might strive if we had a wheel instead of a helm. With a speed of twelve miles an hour, a force of twenty pounds exerted on the wheel produces three hundred thousand pounds' effect on the course. And more, too. For, in some cases, with a double block and runner, they can get two more revolutions."

  The skipper bowed a second time, and said, "My lord,"

  The old man's eye rested on him, he had turned his head without moving his body.

  "Call me Doctor."

  "Master Doctor, I am the skipper."

  "Just so," said the doctor.

  The doctor, as henceforward we shall call him, appeared willing to converse.

  "Skipper, have you an English sextant?"

  "No."

  "Without an English sextant you can not take an altitude at all."

  "The Basques," replied the captain, "took altitudes before there were any English."

  "Be careful you are not taken aback."

  "I keep her away when necessary."

  "Have you tried how many knots she is running?"

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "Just now."

  "How?"

  "By the log."

  "Did you take the trouble to look at the triangle?"

  "Yes."

  "Did the sand run through the glass in exactly thirty seconds?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure that the sand has not worn the hole between the globes?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you proved the sand-glass by the oscillations of a bullet?----"

  "Suspended by a rope yarn drawn out from the top of a coil of soaked hemp? Undoubtedly."

  "Have you waxed the yarn lest it should stretch?"