CHAPTER XI

_June, 1875._

It was now the twentieth parallel of latitude, in the region of the trade winds. The hour was about six in the morning. On the deck of a ship which rode solitary in the midst of the immense blue, was a group of young men, stripped to the waist, in the warmth of the rising sun.

It was Yves' band, the topmen of the foremast and those of the bowsprit.

They had thrown over their shoulders, all of them, the handkerchiefs which they had just washed, and they stood there gravely with back to the sun to dry them. Their bronzed faces, their laughter, had still a youthful, almost childlike, grace, and in their movements, in the supple, flexible way in which they placed their bare feet there was something catlike.

And every morning, at this same hour, in this same sunshine, in this same costume, this group foregathered on these same boards which carried them along, all heedless, in the midst of the infinity of the sea.

This particular morning they were talking about the moon, about its human face, which had remained with them since the night as a pale, persistent image graven in their memory. Throughout their watch they had seen it on high, solitary and round, in the midst of the immense bluish void; they had even been obliged to cover their faces (as they slept on their backs in the open) on account of the maladies and evil spells it casts on the eyes of sailors, when they sleep under its gaze.

There were some amongst them who preserved still, and in spite of all, a great air of nobility, a something indescribably superb in their expression and general appearance; and the contrast between their aspect and the simple things they said was singular.

There was Jean Barrada, the sceptic of the company, who broke into the discussion from time to time with a sarcastic burst of laughter, showing his white teeth always and throwing back his handsome head. There was Clet Kerzulec, a Breton from the island of Ushant, who was preoccupied especially with the human features stamped on the pale disc. And then big Barazère, who posed as a thinker and scholar, assuring them that it was a world much larger than ours and inhabited by strange peoples.

They shook their heads, incredulous, at this, and Yves, very thoughtful, said:

"You know, Barazfère, there are things . . . there are things about which I don't believe you know very much."

And then he added, with an air which cut short the discussion, that in any case, he was going to find me and get me to explain to him what the moon really was.

There was no doubt in their minds that I should be well-informed about the moon as about everything else. For they had often seen me occupied in watching its progress through a copper instrument in company with a signalman who counted for me out loud, with the monotonous voice of a clock, the tranquil minutes and seconds of the night.

Meanwhile, the little handkerchiefs were drying on the bare backs of the men, and the sun was mounting in the wide blue sky.

Some of these little handkerchiefs were all uniformly white; others had pictures on them in many colours; and some even had great ships printed in the middle in a red frame.

I, whose watch it was, gave the order: "'Way aloft! Loose the topsail reef!" And the boat-swain appeared among the talkers blowing his silver whistle. Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, like a band of cats on whom a dog has been loosed, they all scattered, running, into the masting.

Yves lived aloft in his top. Looking up, one was sure to see his tall, slim silhouette against the sky. But one rarely met him below.

It was I who used to climb from time to time to visit him, although my duty no longer required me to do so, since I had been promoted from the rank of midshipman; but I was rather fond of this domain of Yves where one was fanned by a still purer air.

In this top, he had his little belongings; a pack of playing cards in a box, needles and thread for sewing, stolen bananas, greenstuffs taken during the night from the Commander's store, anything he was able to find in his nocturnal marauding that was fresh and green (sailors are partial to these rare things which soothe gums parched by salt). And then he had his "parrot" attached by a claw, its eyes blinking in the sun.

The "parrot" was a large-headed owl of the pampas which had fallen on board one day after a high wind.

There are some strange destinies on the earth, but few stranger than that of this owl making the tour of the world at the top of a mast. How unexpected a fate!

He knew his master and welcomed him with little joyous flappings of his wings. Yves fed him regularly with his own ration of meat, although he used to let him loose.

It amused him greatly to peer into its eyes from quite near, and to see how it shrank away, and arched its back with an air of offended dignity, nodding its head after the manner of a bear. Then he would burst out laughing, and say to it in his Breton accent:

"Oh! but you are a stupid little fool, my old parrot!"

From aloft one dominated as from a great height the deck of the _Sibylle_, a _Sibylle_ flattened out and tapering, very strange to see from this domain of Yves, having the appearance of a long wooden fish, whose colour of new spruce contrasted with the deep and infinite blues of the sea.

And, through all these transparent blues, behind, in our wake, a little grey thing having the same shape as the ship which it followed unceasingly under water: the shark. It is always one shark which follows, rarely two; but if the one is caught, another comes. For days and nights it follows, follows without ever getting tired, waiting for what may fall from the ship: debris of any kind, living men or dead men.

And now and then a number of quite small swallows came also to bear us company, amusing themselves, for a while, in picking up the crumbs of biscuits which we scattered behind us in this watery desert, and then disappeared in the distance describing joyous curves. Little beasts of a rare kind, reddish in colour with a white tail, which live one knows not how, lost amid the great waters, always in the open sea.

Yves, who wanted one, set traps for them, but they were too shrewd to be caught.

We were approaching the Equator, and the regular breath of the trade wind began to die away. There were now erratic breezes which shifted suddenly, followed by times of calm in which everything became immobilized in a kind of immense blue splendour; and then the yards, the tops, and the great white sails were reflected in the water in the form of inverted pictures undulating and incomplete.

The _Sibylle_ scarcely moved, she was slow and lazy, she had the movements of one half asleep. In the great moist heat, which even the nights did not diminish, things, as well as men, seemed to be taken with drowsiness. Gradually in the air a strange calm began to reign. And presently clouds, heavy and obscure, gathered over the warm sea like large dark curtains. The Equator was now quite near.

Sometimes flights of swallows, large ones these and strange in movement, rose suddenly from the sea, taking flight in startled fashion with long pointed wings of a glistening blue, and then settled again, and one saw them no more. These were shoals of flying-fish which had lain in our course and which we had disturbed.

The sails, the cordage hung limp, like dead things; we drifted lifeless like a wreck.

Aloft, in Yves' domain, might still be felt some slow movements which were no longer perceptible below. In this motionless air saturated with rays, the crow's nest continued to rock with a tranquil regularity which conduced to slumber. There were long slow oscillations accompanied always by the same flappings of drooping sails, the same creakings of dry wood.

It was intensely hot, and the light had a surprising splendour, and the mournful sea was of a milky blue, of the colour of melted turquoise.

But when the strange dense clouds, which travelled low so as almost to touch the water, passed over us, they brought us night and drenched us with a deluge of rain.

We were now directly under the Equator; and it seemed that there was no breath of air there to carry us forward.

They lasted for hours, sometimes for a whole day, this darkness and these tropical storms. Then Yves and his friends assumed a uniform which they called the "uniform of savages," and sat them down, all heedless, under the warm downpour and let it rain as it would.

And then suddenly the weather changed. The black curtain of clouds drew slowly away, continuing its sluggish progress, over the turquoise coloured sea; and the splendid light reappeared more astonishing than ever after the darkness; and the powerful equatorial sun proceeded to drink up very quickly all this water that had been poured upon us; the sails, the woodwork of the ship, the awnings recovered their whiteness in the sunshine; the _Sibylle_ in its entirety took on once more its normal clear colour in the midst of the vast blue monotony which stretched everywhere around.

Looking down from the top in which Yves lived, one saw that this blue world was without limit, that its clear depths were without end. One felt that the horizon, the last line of the waters, was a great distance away, although it did not differ at all from the immediate surroundings, having always the same clearness, always the same colour, always the same mirror-like polish. And one realized then the _roundness_ of the earth, which alone set a limit to the vision.

At the hour of sunset there were in the air kinds of vaults formed of successions of tiny golden clouds; they were repeated, in diminishing perspective, until they almost disappeared in the empty distance; one followed them to the point of vertigo; they were like the naves of Apocalyptic temples having no end. And the air was so clear that it needed the horizon of the sea to shut out the vista of these depths of the sky; the last little golden clouds formed as it were a tangent to the line of the waters, and seemed, in their remoteness, as delicate as the finest of hatching.

At other times there were simply long bands which traversed the sky, gold on gold: the clouds of a bright and as if incandescent gold, on a Byzantine background of dull and tarnished gold. The sea below took on a certain shade of peacock blue with reflections of molten metal. Afterwards all this faded very quickly into deep transparencies, into shadowy colours to which it was not possible to give a name.

And the nights which followed, even they were luminous; when everything slept in heavy immobility, in a silence of death, the stars appeared above more brilliant than in any other region of the world.

And the sea also was illumined in its depths. There was a kind of immense diffused light in the waters. The slightest movements--of the ship in its slow progress, of the shark as it turned about in our wake--disclosed in the warm eddies lights like that of the glow-worm. And, besides, on the great phosphorescent mirror of the sea, there were thousands of fleeting flames; it was as if there were myriads of little lamps which lit themselves everywhere, burnt for a few seconds and then went out. These nights were aswoon with heat, full of phosphorus, and all this dimmed immensity was pregnant with light, and all these waters were replete with latent life in its rudimentary state as formerly the mournful waters of the primitive world.