"Le moment approche," said Peyrol with a queer twitch at a corner of his lip, while under his soft woollen cap his venerable locks stirred in the breath of a suddenly warm air. "The great moment – eh?"
He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be hovering above the lieutenant's shoulder.
"What's this infernal company?" murmured the latter without even looking at Peyrol.
"All old friends – quoi?" said Peyrol in a homely tone. "We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves. The fewer the men the greater the glory. Catherine is getting the vegetables ready for the noonday soup and the Englishman is coming down towards the Passe where he will arrive about noon too, ready to have his eye put out. You know, lieutenant, that will be your job. You may depend on me for sending you off when the moment comes. For what is it to you? You have no friends, you have not even a petite amie. As to expecting an old rover like me – oh no, lieutenant! Of course liberty is sweet, but what do you know of it, you epaulette-wearers? Moreover, I am no good for quarter-deck talks and all that politeness."
"I wish, Peyrol, you would not talk so much," said Lieutenant Réal, turning his head slightly. He was struck by the strange expression on the old rover's face. "And I don't see what the actual moment matters. I am going to look for the fleet. All you have to do is to hoist the sails for me and then scramble ashore."
"Very simple," observed Peyrol through his teeth, and then began to sing:
"Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids
God-dam! Moi, j'aime les Anglais
Ils ont un si bon caractère!"
but interrupted himself suddenly to hail Scevola:
"Hé! Citoyen!" and then remarked confidentially to Réaclass="underline" "He isn't asleep, you know, but he isn't like the English, he has a sacré mauvais caractère. He got into his head," continued Peyrol, in a loud and innocent tone, "that you locked him up in this cabin last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he gave you just now?"
Both Lieutenant Réal and the innocent Michel appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the time Peyrol was thinking: "I wish to goodness I knew how that thunderstorm is getting on and what course it is shaping. I can't find that out unless I go up to the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be as far as the Rhône Valley; no doubt it is and it will come out of it too, curses on it. One won't be able to reckon on half an hour of steady wind from any quarter." He directed a look of ironic gaiety at all the faces in turn. Michel met it with a faithful-dog gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his chin buried on his chest. Lieutenant Réal was insensible to outward impressions and his absent stare made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself presently fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles inundated it with a sudden light in which Michel blinked like an owl.
"It's hot early," he announced aloud but only because he had formed the habit of talking to himself. He would not have presumed to offer an opinion unless asked by Peyrol.
His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he proposed to masthead the yards and even asked Lieutenant Réal to help in that operation which was accomplished in silence except for the faint squeaking of the blocks. The sails, however, were kept hauled up in the gear.
"Like this," said Peyrol, "you have only to let go the ropes and you will be under canvas at once."
Without answering Réal returned to his position by the rudder-head. He was saying to himself – "I am sneaking off. No, there is honour, duty. And of course I will return. But when? They will forget all about me and I shall never be exchanged. This war may last for years, – " and illogically he wished he could have had a God to whom he could pray for relief in his anguish. "She will be in despair," he thought, writhing inwardly at the mental picture of a distracted Arlette. Life, however, had embittered his spirit early, and he said to himself: "But in a month's time will she even give me a thought?" Instantly he felt remorseful with a remorse strong enough to lift him to his feet as if he were morally obliged to go up again and confess to Arlette this sacrilegious cynicism of thought. "I am mad," he muttered, perching himself on the low rail. His lapse from faith plunged him into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all his strength of will go out of him. He sat there apathetic and suffering. He meditated dully: "Young men have been known to die suddenly; why should not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my endurance. I am half dead already. Yes! but what is left of that life does not belong to me now."
"Peyrol," he said in such a piercing tone that even Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to reduce his shrillness and went on speaking very carefully: "I have left a letter for the Secretary General at the Majorité to pay twenty-five hundred francs to Jean – you are Jean, are you not? – Peyrol, price of the tartane in which I sail. Is that right?"
"What did you do that for?" asked Peyrol with an extremely stony face. "To get me into trouble?"
"Don't be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your, name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper. I must ask you to go there and tell them that you have seen with your own eyes Lieutenant Réal sail away on his mission."
The stoniness of Peyrol persisted but his eyes were full of fury. "Oh, yes, I see myself going there. Twenty-five hundred francs! Twenty-five hundred fiddlesticks." His tone changed suddenly. "I heard some one say that you were an honest man, and I suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with your honesty." He glared at the lieutenant and then thought: "He doesn't even pretend to listen to what I say" – and another sort of anger, partly contemptuous and with something of dim sympathy in it, replaced his downright fury. "Pah!" he said, spat over the side, and walking up to Réal with great deliberation, slapped him on the shoulder. The only effect of this proceeding was to make Réal look up at him without any expression whatever.