VII.
AND they floated into the fear of the night together. Again the
ghostly fires began to wimple about them: naught else was visible
but the high stars. Black hours passed. From minute to minute
Maximilien cried out:—"Sucou! sucou!" Stéphane lay motionless
and dumb: his feet, touching Maximilien's naked hips, felt
singularly cold.
… Something knocked suddenly against the bottom of the canoe,
—knocked heavily—making a hollow loud sound. It was not
Stéphane;—Stéphane lay still as a stone: it was from the depth
below. Perhaps a great fish passing.
It came again,—twice,—shaking the canoe like a great blow.
Then Stéphane suddenly moved,—drew up his feet a little,—made
as if to speak:—"Ou … "; but the speech failed at his lips,—
ending in a sound like the moan of one trying to call out in
sleep;—and Maximilien's heart almost stopped beating. … Then
Stéphane's limbs straightened again; he made no more movement;—
Maximilien could not even hear him breathe. … All the sea had
begun to whisper.
A breeze was rising;—Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All
at once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,—that
he did not care what might happen. He thought about a cricket he
had one day watched in the harbor,—drifting out with the tide,
on an atom of dead bark.—and he wondered what had become of it
Then he understood that he himself was the cricket,—still
alive. But some boy had found him and pulled off his legs.
There they were,—his own legs, pressing against him: he could
still feel the aching where they had been pulled off; and they
had been dead so long they were now quite cold. … It was
certainly Stéphane who had pulled them off. …
The water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over
and over again,—louder each time, as if it thought he could not
hear. But he heard it very well:—"Bon-Dié, li conm vent … li
ka touché nou … nou pa save ouè li." (But why had the Bon-Dié
shaken the wind?) "Li pa ka tini zié," answered the water. …Ouille!—He
might all the same care not to upset folks
in the sea! … Mi! …
But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware
that a white, strange, bearded face was looking at him: the Bon-Dié
was there,—bending over him with a lantern,—talking to him
in a language he did not understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly
had eyes,—great gray eyes that did not look wicked at all. He
tried to tell the Bon-Dié how sorry he was for what he had been
saying about him;—but found he could not utter a word, He felt
great hands lift him up to the stars, and lay him down very near
them,—just under them. They burned blue-white, and hurt his eyes
like lightning:—he felt afraid of them. … About him he heard
voices,—always speaking the same language, which he could not
understand. … "
Poor little devils!—poor little devils!" Then
he heard a bell ring; and the Bon-Dié made him swallow something
nice and warm;—and everything became black again. The stars
went out! …
… Maximilien was lying under an electric-light on board the
great steamer Rio de Janeiro, and dead Stéphane beside him. …
It was four o'clock in the morning.
