The Wreck
It was yesterday, December the thirty-first.
I had just lunched with my old friend, Georges Garin. The servant brought him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.
“May I?” Georges asked.
“Certainly.”
And he began to read eight pages written in a large English hand and crossed in all directions. He read it slowly with a grave intentness, and the deep interest we take in the things that lie near our hearts.
Then he placed the letter on a corner of the chimneypiece and said:
“Well, that’s a queer story and one I’ve never told you; a love story too, and it happened to me. A queer New Year’s Day I had, that year. It’s twenty years since. … I was thirty then, and now I’m fifty!
“In those days I was an inspector of the Maritime Insurance Company that today I direct. I had arranged to spend New Year’s Day on holiday in Paris, since it’s usual to keep holiday that day, when I had a letter from the director ordering me to set out immediately for the island of Ré, where a three-master of St. Nazaire, insured by us, had run aground. It was then eight o’clock in the morning. I reached the Company’s offices at ten to receive my orders, and the same evening I took the express, which landed me at La Rochelle the following day, December the thirty-first.
“I had two hours to spare before going aboard the boat belonging to Ré, the Jean-Guiton. I took a walk round the town. La Rochelle really is a fantastic and strangely individual town, with its twisting labyrinthine streets, where the pavements run under endless galleries with covered arcades, like those of the Rue de Rivoli; but these stooping galleries and arcades are low and mysterious and look as if they had been built and left there as a setting for conspirators, the ancient and impressive setting of old wars, heroic, savage wars of religion. It is indeed the old Huguenot city, grave, discreet, not superbly built, and with none of those splendid monuments that make Rouen so magnificent, but remarkable by virtue of its whole air of austerity and a lurking cunning that it wears, this city of hard-fought battles, fated to hatch fantastic causes, this town which saw the rise of the Calvinist faith, and gave birth to the conspiracy of the four sergeants.
“When I had wandered for some time through these odd streets, I went aboard a little steam tug, black and tubby, which was to take me to the island of Ré. She moved out, in an irritated sort of way, her whistle blowing off, slipped between the two old towers that guard the harbour, crossed the roadstead, got through the breakwater built by Richelieu, with enormous stones that are visible at the surface of the water and shut in the town like a vast collar; then she veered to the right.
“It was one of those melancholy days that oppress and crush the mind, weigh on the heart, and deaden in us all strength and energy; a grey bitter day, darkened by a thick fog, as wet as rain, as cold as ice, and as unhealthy to breathe as a whiff from the sewers.
“Under this roof of low-hanging, sinister haze, the yellow sea, the shallow sandy sea of these endless beaches, lay without a ripple, motionless, lifeless, a sea of discoloured, oily, stagnant water. The Jean-Guiton drove forward, rolling a little, as she always did; she cut through the sleek cloudy surface, leaving behind her a few waves, a brief heaving of the water, a slight rippling that shortly died away.
“I began to talk to the captain, a short, almost limbless man, as tubby as his ship and with just such a rolling gait. I wanted to gather some details of the loss that I was going to examine. A big square-built three-master of St. Nazaire, the Marie-Joseph, had run aground during a wild night, on the sandy shore of the island of Ré.
“The owner wrote that the storm had flung the vessel so high up that it had been impossible to refloat her, and that it would be necessary to get everything off her that could be got off. It was my duty to examine the situation of the wreck, to form an opinion as to what must have been her condition before the disaster, and to judge whether every effort had been made to get her off. I had come as the Company’s agent, to be a witness for the defence, if need be, in the legal inquiry.
“On receiving my report, the director had to take such measures as he judged necessary to protect our interests.
“The captain of the Jean-Guiton knew all the details of the affair, having been summoned to help, with his boat, in the attempts at salvage.
“He told me the story of the loss, a perfectly simple story. The Marie-Joseph, running before a furious gale, lost in the darkness, steering as best she could through a foaming sea—‘a milk-soup sea,’ the captain called it—had run aground on the vast sandbanks which at low tide turn the coasts of these parts into endless Saharas.
“As I talked, I looked round me and in front of me. Between the sea and the louring sky was a clear space that gave a good view ahead. We were hugging a coast.
“ ‘Is this the island of Ré?’ I asked.
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“And all at once the captain stretched his right hand in front of us and showed me an almost indistinguishable object lying right out at sea.
“ ‘Look, there’s your ship,’ he said.
“ ‘The Marie-Joseph?’
“ ‘Yes, that’s her.’
“I was astounded. This almost invisible object, which I had taken for a reef, seemed to me to lie at least three kilometres from land.
“ ‘But, Captain,’ I answered, ‘there must be a hundred fathoms of water at the place you’re pointing out.’
“He burst out laughing.
“ ‘A hundred fathoms, my friend! … There aren’t two, I tell you.’
“He was from Bordeaux. He went on:
“ ‘It will be high tide at twenty minutes to ten. You go out on the shore, your hands in your pockets, after you’ve launched at the Dauphin, and I promise you that at ten to three, or three at the latest, you’ll be able to walk dryfoot to the wreck, my friend, and you’ll have an hour and three-quarters to two hours to stay on board, not more, mind: you’d be caught by the tide. The farther out the sea goes, the faster it comes in. This coast is as flat as a louse. Mark my words and start back at ten to five; at half past seven you come on board the Jean-Guiton, which will land you this same evening on the quay at La Rochelle.’
“I thanked the captain, and I went and sat down in the bows of the tug to look at the little town of Saint-Martin with which we were rapidly coming up.
“It was like all the miniature ports that serve as chief towns to every barren little island lying off the coasts of continents. It was a large fishing-village, one foot in the sea, one foot on land, living on fish and poultry, vegetables and cockles, turnips and mussels. The island is very low-lying, and sparsely cultivated; it seems to be thickly peopled none the less, but I did not penetrate inland.
“After lunch, I crossed a little headland; then, as the tide was rapidly going out, I walked across the sands to a sort of black rock which I could see above the water, far, far away.
“I walked quickly on this yellow plain, which had the resilience of living flesh and seemed to sweat under my feet. A moment ago the sea had been there; now I saw it slipping out of sight in the distance, and I could no longer distinguish the verge that separated sand and sea. I felt that I was watching a gigantic and supernatural transformation scene. One moment the Atlantic was in front of me, and then it had disappeared in the shore, as stage scenery disappears through trapdoors, and now I was walking through a desert. Only the scent and the breath of the salt sea was still round me. I caught the smell of seaweed, the smell of salt water, the sharp healthy smell of the land. I walked quickly: I was no longer cold; I looked at the stranded wreck which grew larger as I approached and now looked like a huge stranded whale.
“She seemed to spring from the ground, and in this vast flat yellow plain she assumed surprising proportions. She lay over on her side, split, broken, and through her sides, like the sides of a beast, showed her broken bones, bones of tarred wood pierced with great nails. The sand had already invaded her, entering by all the rents; it held her, possessed her, would never let her go again. She looked as if she had taken root in it. Her bows were deeply buried in this soft treacherous beach, while her stern, lifted clean off the ground, seemed to fling to heaven, like a desperate and appealing cry, the two white words on the black bulwarks: Marie-Joseph.
“I scrambled into this corpse of a ship over the lower side; then I reached the bridge and explored below. The daylight, coming in through the shattered hatches and the rents in the sides, flooded the long, sombre, cave-like spaces, full of smashed woodwork, with a dim light. There was nothing left inside her but the sand that formed the flooring of this wooden-walled underworld.
“I began to make notes on the state of the vessel. I sat down on an empty broken barrel, and I wrote by the light of a large porthole through which I could see the boundless stretch of shore. Every now and again, I felt my skin contract with a strange shudder of cold and loneliness; and sometimes I stopped writing to listen to the vague mysterious sounds of the wreck: the sound of crabs scratching at the bulwarks with their hooked claws, the sound of a thousand small sea-creatures already at work on the body of this death, and the gentle regular sound of the teredo worm ceaselessly gnawing, like the grinding of a gimlet, in every part of the old timers, eating out their insides and devouring them all together.
“Suddenly I heard human voices quite near me. I leaped up as if I had seen a ghost. For a brief moment I verily thought I was going to see two drowned men rising from the bottom of this sinister shell to tell me the manner of their death. You may be sure it did not take me long to climb in all haste to the bridge, and I saw standing beside the ship a tall gentleman with three young girls, or rather a tall Englishman with three little English girls. They were certainly far more frightened than I had been when they saw a man rush violently up from the depths of the deserted three-master. The youngest of the little girls ran away; the two others clutched their father with both arms; as for him, his mouth opened; he gave no other sign of surprise.
“Then, after a brief pause, he spoke:
“ ‘Are you the owner of this vessel, sir?’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“ ‘Can I look over her?’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“He then delivered himself of a long sentence in English, of which I could distinguish only the one word ‘gracious,’ recurring several times.
“He looked round for a place to climb on board and I pointed him out the best place and offered him a hand. He got up; then we helped up the three little girls, now recovered from their fright. They were charming, especially the eldest, a fair-haired girl of eighteen, fresh as a flower, and so dainty, so adorably slender. Upon my word, a pretty English girl is like nothing so much as a frail sea flower. This one might just have sprung from the sand, and kept its gold in her hair. The exquisite freshness of these English girls makes one think of the faintly lovely colours of rosy shells, of mother of pearl, rare and mysterious, hidden in the fathomless depths of the seas.
“She spoke French a little better than the father, and interpreted between us. I had to tell the story of the wrecking in all its details, which I extemporised as if I had been present at the disaster. Then the whole family descended into the interior of the wreck. Little cries of astonishment broke from them as soon as they entered this dim shadowy gallery; and in a moment father and all three daughters were displaying sketching-books which they had doubtless had concealed in their bulky waterproofs, and they all set themselves forthwith to make four pencil sketches of this strange and gloomy place.
“They sat side by side on a jutting beam, and the four sketching-books supported on eight knees were covered with little black lines which evidently represented the gaping belly of the Marie-Joseph.
“The eldest girl talked to me as she worked, and I continued my inspection of the skeleton of the ship.
“I learned that they were spending the winter at Biarritz and that they had come to the island of Ré on purpose to look at this foundered three-master. These people had none of the English insolence; they were just jolly, kindhearted idiots, born wanderers such as England sends out over the whole world. The father, lank, lean, his red face encased in drooping white whiskers, for all the world like an animated sandwich, a slice of ham in the shape of a human head, between two little hair cushions; the daughters, long-legged, like half-grown storks, as lean as their father, except the eldest, and all three of the girls charming, but especially the eldest.
“She had such a quaint way of speaking, of describing things, of understanding and failing to understand, of lifting to question me eyes as blue as the deep sea, of stopping the sketch to study the scene of her efforts, of setting to work again, and of saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ that time went unheeded while I stood there watching and listening to her.
“Suddenly she murmured:
“ ‘I hear something moving lightly on this boat.’
“I listened carefully, and at once I heard a faint sound, a strange regular sound. What was it? I got up and went to look out of the porthole, and a wild shout broke from me. The sea had come up with us; it was on the point of surrounding us.
“We rushed to the bridge. It was too late. The sea was all round us, and running in towards the shore at a terrific speed. No, it didn’t run, it slid, it glided over the ground, spread out like a monstrous stain. Only a few inches of water covered the sand, but the swiftly moving verge of the stealthy flood was already beyond our sight.
“The Englishman was in favour of plunging through it, but I restrained him; flight was impossible, on account of the deep pools that we had had to pick our way round as we came, and into which we should fall on the way back.
“We felt a sudden pang of mortal agony. Then the little English girl managed to smile and murmured:
“ ‘We’re shipwrecked now.’
“I wanted to laugh; but I was paralysed with fear, a frightful cowardly fear, as vile and treacherous as this advancing sea. In one moment of insight I saw all the dangers we were running. I wanted madly to cry: ‘Help!’ But who was there to hear me?
“The two smaller English girls huddled against their father, who was looking in consternation at the vast stretch of water round us.
“And night was falling, as swiftly as the sea was swelling, a heavy damp icy night.
“ ‘There’s nothing for it but staying on the boat,’ I said.
“ ‘Oh, yes,’ the Englishman answered.
“We stayed up there a quarter of an hour, half an hour, I really don’t know how long, watching the yellow water that deepened all round us, and swirled and seemed to boil and leap for joy over the wide recaptured shore.
“One of the little girls was cold, and we conceived the idea of going below to shelter from the small but icy wind that blew lightly in our faces and pricked our skin.
“I leaned over the hold. The ship was full of water, so we were forced to crouch against the aft bulwark, which afforded us a little shelter.
“Now the shadows of night were falling round us, and we pressed close together, surrounded by the darkness and the waters. I felt the English girl’s shoulder trembling against my shoulder; her teeth chattered a little; but I felt too the gentle warmth of her body through her clothes, and this warmth thrilled me like a caress. We did not talk now; we stayed there motionless, mute, crouching as beasts in a ditch crouch against a storm.
“And yet, in spite of everything, in spite of the night, in spite of the terrible and growing damp, I began to feel glad to be there, glad of cold and danger, glad to be spending long hours of darkness and terror on this narrow hulk, close to this pretty and adorable young girl.
“I wondered why I was filled with so strange a sense of well-being and joy.
“Why? Who knows? Because she was there? And who was she? An unknown little English girl. I did not love her, I did not know her, and a passion of pity for her filled me, overwhelmed me. I longed to save her, to devote myself to her, to commit a thousand follies. A strange thing! How is it that the nearness of a woman bowls us over like this? Is it her grace that enslaves and enfolds us? The seductive charm of youth and beauty mounting to our heads like wine?
“Isn’t it rather a fugitive touch of love, this mysterious love that never ceases to drive human beings into each other’s arms, that tries its power the moment a man and a woman meet, piercing their hearts with a vague and deep and secret emotion, as the earth is given water that it may bear flowers?
“But the silence of the night and the sky grew terrifying, for we heard surging faintly round us the gentle swishing of wide waters, the hollow murmur of the rising sea, and the monotonous lapping of the tide against the boat.
“Suddenly I heard sobs. The smallest of the English girls was crying. Then the father tried to comfort her, and they began to talk in their own tongue, which I did not understand. I guessed that he was reassuring her, and that she was still afraid.
“ ‘You are not too cold?’ I asked my neighbour.
“ ‘Oh, I’m dreadfully cold.’
“I wanted to give her my cloak; she declined it, but I had taken it off. I wrapped it round her in spite of her protests. In the brief struggle, I touched her hand and a marvellous thrill ran through my whole body.
“For some little time the air had been growing sharper and the water surging with more violence against the sides of the boat. I stood up; a great gust of wind blew in my face. The wind was rising.
“The Englishman noticed it at the same moment, and said simply:
“ ‘This is bad for us, this is.’
“It was bad indeed: it was certain death if a swell, even a light swell, got up to batter and shake the boat, already so broken and knocked about that the first fair-sized wave would carry it away in fragments.
“Our misery increased every moment as the gusts of wind grew more and more violent. The waves were breaking a little now, and through the shadows I saw white lines, lines of foam, rise and vanish, while each surge struck the hulk of the Marie-Joseph and sent through her a brief shudder that communicated itself to us.
“The English girl was trembling; I felt her shivering against me, and I felt a wild desire to seize her in my arms.
“In the distance, ahead of us, to left and right of us, and behind us, the lamps of lighthouses shone out down the coasts, white lights, yellow lights, red lights, revolving lights, like enormous eyes, like giant eyes watching us, spying on us, waiting hungrily to see us disappear. I found one of them particularly maddening. It went out and flashed on again every third second; it really was an eye, with an ever-winking eyelid dropping over its fiery glance.
“Every now and then the Englishman struck a match to look at the time; then he replaced the watch in his pocket. All at once he spoke to me over his daughters’ heads, with the utmost seriousness:
“ ‘Sir, I wish you a happy new year.’
“It was midnight. I held out my hand, and he shook it; then he spoke a few words of English, and suddenly he and his daughters began to sing ‘God Save the King’; the sound rose in the darkness, in the silent air, and died in the vast gulf of space.
“For a moment I wanted to laugh; then a strange fierce emotion seized me.
“There was something at once menacing and superb in this song sung by these doomed and shipwrecked people; it was a prayer and it was magnificent, and worthy of that ancient glorious Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.
“When they had finished, I asked my neighbour to sing something alone, a song, a hymn, anything she liked, to help us forget our woes. She consented, and a moment later her clear young voice sounded out in the darkness. She sang what must have been a plaintive song, for the notes were long-drawn, fell slowly from her lips and fluttered like wounded birds above the waves.
“The sea was rising: it was flinging itself against the wreck now. But I was conscious of nothing but this voice. I thought of the sirens too. If a boat had passed close by us, what would the sailors have said? My troubled mind lost itself in a dream. A siren. Was she not in very truth a siren, this sea maiden, who had kept me on this worm-eaten ship and in a little time would plunge with me into the waters? …
“The whole five of us were flung violently across the bridge, for the Marie-Joseph had rolled over on her right side. The English girl fell on top of me; I had seized her in my arms and I pressed passionate kisses on her cheek, the hollow of her temple, her hair, madly, not knowing or realising what I was doing, thinking my last moment had come. The boat did not roll again; nor did we stir hand or foot.
“ ‘Kate,’ said her father. The girl in my arms answered, ‘Yes,’ and made a movement to draw away. I swear that at that moment I could have wished the boat to break in two, so that she and I fell into the water together.
“ ‘A little seesaw,’ the Englishman added. ‘It’s nothing. I have my three daughters safe.’
“Not seeing the eldest, he had at first believed her lost.
“I stood up slowly, and all at once I saw a light on the sea, quite near us. I shouted: there was an answering shout. It was a boat in search of us: the landlord of the hotel had foreseen our imprudence.
“We were saved. I was very sorry for it. They got us off our raft and took us back to Saint-Martin.
“The Englishman was rubbing his hands, and muttering:
“ ‘Now for a good supper! Now for a good supper!’
“We had supper. I was not happy. I was regretting the Marie-Joseph.
“Next day we had to go our separate ways, after many embraces and promises to write. They set off for Biarritz. For two pins I’d have followed them.
“I was a silly ass: I all but asked that young girl to marry me. I give you my word that if we had spent eight days together, I should have married her. How weak and incomprehensible man often is!
“Two years passed before I heard a word about them; then I received a letter from New York. She was married, and wrote to tell me so. And since then we have written every year, on the first of January. She tells me of her life, talks to me about her children, her sisters, never about her husband. Why? Ah, why? … As for me, I write to her of nothing but the Marie-Joseph. She is perhaps the only woman that I have loved … no … that I would have loved. … Ah, well … who knows? … Life hurries us on. … And then … and then … nothing is left. … She must be old now. … I shouldn’t recognise her. … Ah, the girl of those days … the girl of the wreck … what a woman … divine! She wrote to me that her hair is quite white. … My God … that hurts me intolerably. … Her hair white. … No, the girl I knew no longer exists. … How sad it is … all this! …”