The Ship of Coral

Gaspard had slept late, it was full morning and the light was strong enough to shew Sagesse’s face and its expression. Something was evidently the matter. He shut the door and c...

In the south, at night, the trees are full of voices. Dare you sit in the woods of Martinique at night you would hear in the green twilight that the moon makes through the leave...

White umbrellas, striped verandahs, black shadows, laughter, motion, colour, coloured people, coloured clothes, lemon-tinted houses, flower-blue sky, a street of light beneath a...

At St. Pierre, on the west side of the island, the sea is deep and still, morning comes late because of the shadow of the mountains, and the sunset blazes up the streets like a...

He remembered everything at once. It would almost have seemed that his mind behind the veil of sleep had been reasoning the matter out, for he had awakened saying to himself out...

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...

She wore it as a garment; he saw her surrounded by its beauty; dawn lit her in the Street of the Precipice, morn in the music-haunted Place de la Fontaine; evening in the twilit...

From that day Sagesse’s manner changed. One might have fancied that the man’s nature had changed; a friendliness and a bonhomie never exhibited before appeared in his tone and c...

The street of the Precipice hung literally between sea and sky; almost as steep as a ladder, so steep that the causeway here and there broke into flights of steps, just as a riv...

A smoke-coloured band, curious, and like a thin curved cloud, cut the grey background of sky to eastward. It was in motion. Even as he looked it changed subtly in shape till now...

In a moment, night, wearing all her jewellery, was standing above the sea, the wind had died away, the cormorants had ceased crying, and the boom of the waves was the only sound...

From the salt-white sand of the beach to eastward, and some two hundred yards from the palm-clump a ridge of coral rocks ran out into the sea like a natural pier. The water lay...

Gaspard, though a man full-grown and a man, moreover, who had passed his life in touch with the brutal side of things, had still in his nature very much of the child. The Proven...

He must have fallen asleep as he knelt, for when he regained consciousness he had no memory of having lain down. Yet he was lying on his side amidst the bushes, the day was broa...

Most of us have never known the day as it is and the night as it is. Protected from the wind and the sunlight by walls and houses, by artificial light from the darkness, by word...

The big Yves laughed in his beard and dug his naked toes into the hot white sand luxuriously. Gaspard was shod, for he had turned in all standing just before the disaster to the...

He had done big things, had Captain Sagesse, since the day thirty years and more ago when, deserting from a French ship, he had taken up his abode at St. Pierre. Beginning at th...

The sea lay blue to the far horizon. Blue—Ah, blue is but a name till you have seen the sea that breaks around the Bahamas and gives anchorage to the tall ships at Port Royal; t...

When Martinique was a young colony, when Versailles was the palace of a king, away in those sunlit times before the storm of the Revolution, the Jardin des Plantes of St. Pierre...

Gaspard, leaning on the taffrail, watched Martinique dwindling in the sun-blaze and sea-dazzle. Dominica, to eastward, stood vague, and ghostly on the horizon; to westward the s...

The good fortune that had followed him pursued also the _Anne Martin_, the wind held steady, the sky clear; flying, fresh weather and a sparkling sea brought her into the Caribb...

His tongue felt huge in his mouth and his hands seemed the size of pillows. He had felt all this before once, long ago, when a knock-out drop had been put in his drink and he ha...

_La Belle Arlésienne_, steered by magic hands during the night, had raised some magic horizon and passed it to anchor in paradise. So it seemed to him as his eyes travelled from...

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’...

“Well, if you have business, I will not detain you—so you start on Friday? I may see you before you go, anyhow, remember Paul Seguin, who is always your friend, and be careful w...

One could see the palms bending to the breeze, and the snow of the surf and the white flicker of the gulls, whose voices came, now and then, weak and spirit-like, across the water.

From away out there a hand seemed to have reached clutching at his heart. The star so steadfast and so still held him by its very stillness and steadfastness. There, where the s...

Next morning very early Marie made her way to the Rue Victor Hugo, received her tray of goods, and started on her journey. It was a long journey to-day, right away to Grande Ans...

He felt like an actor who had to appear on the stage with a half-learned part. Thinking entirely of how to hide his treasure, he had forgotten to invent a story to account for h...

At about six o’clock the next morning Gaspard awoke from sleep, half stifled by the close air of the little cabin where Sagesse had placed him. The taste of the rum was still in...

Then, as if challenged by the bells, the clouds around Pelée spread out fanwise, the sky darkened, and Marie, taking shelter beneath a verandah, heard the rush of rain as it swe...

One day, M. Sartine sent Marie to call at a house on the highroad that leads across the Morne Parnasse. Her business was to shew some lace to a Spanish lady, Señora Vigil, and t...

For a moment he knelt helpless, with idle hands. He knew quite well that though the vessel seemed steering straight for the island, she might pass it a long distance away; a smo...

All this time, steadily as the tide, the sun had been sinking; he had dropped through a dazzling azure sky and he was now hanging almost in touch with the western horizon, a bal...

If a ship could develop a character, one might have fancied _La Belle Arlésienne_ infected with the character of Sagesse; at least so it seemed to Gaspard. There was something s...

Then Gaspard came on deck. He had spoken his mind and he felt easier. He had tried to dissuade Sagesse from disturbing this resting-place of bones and possible treasure, Sagesse...

It was his landlady, Man’m Faly. She had promised to wake him at three, for _La Belle Arlésienne_ would cast her moorings and be away at four, if there was wind enough. Mistrust...

It rains very often on the west of Martinique. The day is joyous, brilliant, gaudy with the yellow of the city and the blue of sky and sea. Pelée, with his turban of cloud, sits...

“_Ma foi!_” said Sagesse, taking the arm of Gaspard and leading him towards the spot where the negro stood with the skull still raised in air. “Skeleton Island, as you once call...

“Hi yi ow!” shrill as a bird, and at the cry, like a shaken beehive, the forecastle broke into life; the decks in a moment were a-swarm, chattering like a tree full of monkeys,...

He stood for a moment balancing himself, his eyes sweeping the sky-line to southward, which shewed neither sail nor stain of smoke, and as he stood he heard the island calling t...

When they passed through Morne Rouge the last rays of sunset were flaming up the streets of St. Pierre and the light of the moon in her first quarter was beginning to flood the...

The crew of the _Anne Martin_ were held spellbound by the disaster, just as their officers had been. Nor did use to the scene break the spell, for the nearer they approached the...

After the first outburst of raving, impetuous grief, the grief of a child rather than the grief of a man, Gaspard rose up from where he had cast himself down by Yves. The sun ha...

There was no light on deck but the light of the binnacle lamp and a glimmer from a crack in the deck-house door which was closed, and out of the darkness away forward came this...

The island had passed away, painted out by distance; the sky above the horizon, paled by the indigo of the sea, lay like a ring of sparkling emerald; to southward, where the eme...

“Look here,” he said, “we have got the boat across the island and afloat in the lagoon. We have got the diving apparatus in her ready for working. Nothing remains to be done but...