ALONE

The child remained motionless on the rock – no calling out, no appeal. He spoke not a word. The same silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men – no farewell from the men to the child. The child watched the departing bark. It seemed as if he realized his position. What did he realize? Darkness.

A moment later the boat gained the crook and entered it. Then it was seen no more – all was over – the dark had gained the sea.

The child watched its disappearance – he was astounded. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. He yielded. There was no complaint – the irreproachable does not reproach.

He forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet – the tide was flowing; a gust passed through his hair – the north wind was rising. He shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the shudder of awakening. He cast his eyes about him. He was alone. Those men had just gone away. And those men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.

He could not say who they were. His childhood passed among them. He was in juxtaposition to them, nothing more. He had just been forgotten by them.

He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket. It was winter – it was night. It will be necessary to walk. He did not know where he was. He knew nothing. He was ten years old. The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw the night and depths where he heard the waves.

He stretched his little thin arms and yawned. Then suddenly with the agility of a squirrel, or perhaps of an acrobat he turned his back on the creek, and began to climb up the cliff. To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an animal – he did both.

The intensity of cold had, however, frozen the snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. His man’s jacket, which was too big for him, got in his way^[12]. Now and then he came upon a little ice. Once he came on a vein of slate, which suddenly gave way under him.

Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a roof. He rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of grass saved him. Finally he jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he rose from the precipice.

Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. The bitter north-wester^[13] was blowing; he tightened his rough sailor’s jacket about his chest.

The child gained the tableland, stopped, placed his feet firmly on the frozen ground, and looked about him. Behind him was the sea; in front the land; above, the sky – but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked the zenith.

Far away the waters stirred confusedly in the ominous clear-obscure of immensity. The boat was going quick away. It seemed to grow smaller every minute. Nothing appears so rapid as the flight of a vessel melting into the distance of ocean.

A storm threatened in the air. Chaos was about to appear. Suddenly there came a gust of wind. The boat sank into the horizon. The little star which she carried into shadow paled. More and more the boat became amalgamated with the night, then disappeared.

At least the child seemed to understand it: he ceased to look at the sea.

ON THE LAND

It was about seven o’clock in the evening. The wind was now diminishing. The child was on the land at the extreme south point of Portland.

Portland is a peninsula; but the child did not know what a peninsula is, and was ignorant even of the name of Portland. He knew but one thing, which is, that one can walk until one drops down. They had brought him there and left him there. They and there – these two enigmas represented his doom. They were humankind. There was the universe. In the great twilight world, what was there for the child? Nothing. He walked towards this Nothing.

He crossed the first plateau diagonally, then a second, then a third. The slope was sometimes steep, but always short. The high, bare plains of Portland resemble great flagstones. From time to time he stopped, and seemed to hold counsel with himself. The night was becoming very dark. He now only saw a few steps before him.

All of a sudden^[14] he stopped, listened for an instant, and with an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction turned quickly and directed his steps towards an eminence of moderate height. There was on the eminence a shape which in the mist looked like a tree. The child had just heard a noise in this direction, which was the noise neither of the wind nor of the sea, nor was it the cry of animals. He thought that some one was there, and soon he was at the foot of the hillock.

In truth, someone was there. The child was before a corpse, dumb, wondering, and with eyes fixed.

To the child it was an apparition. The child saw a spectre. Besides, he did not understand. The child took a step, then another; he ascended and approached. Bold, yet trembling, he went close up to survey the spectre.

When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and examined it. The spectre was tarred; here and there it shone. The child distinguished the face. It was coated over with pitch. The child saw the mouth, which was a hole; the nose, which was a hole; the eyes, which were holes. The body was wrapped in coarse canvas. The canvas was mouldy and torn. A knee protruded through it. Partly corpse, partly skeleton. The face was the colour of earth. The canvas, glued to the bones, showed in reliefs like the robe of a statue. The skull, cracked and fractured, gaped like a rotten fruit. The teeth were still human, for they retained a laugh. There were a few hairs of beard on the cheek.

The child ran until he was breathless, at random, desperate, over the plain into the snow, into space. His flight warmed him. He needed it. When his breath failed him he stopped, but he dared not look back. He fancied that the birds pursued him, that the dead man had undone his chain and was perhaps hurrying behind him, and no doubt the gibbet itself was descending the hill, running after the dead man; he feared to see these things if he turned his head.

When he had recovered his breath he resumed his flight. He no longer felt hunger nor cold – he felt fear. One instinct had given place to another. To escape was now his whole thought – to escape from what? From everything. On all sides life seemed to enclose him like a horrible wall. He was running. He ran on for an indefinite time.

All at once he stopped. He was ashamed of running away. He drew himself up, stamped his foot, and, with head erect, looked round. There was no longer hill, nor gibbet, nor flights of crows. The child pursued his way: he now no longer ran but walked.

The child had run quite a quarter of a league, and walked another quarter, when suddenly he felt the craving of hunger. A thought occurred to him forcibly – that he must eat. But what to eat, where to eat, how to eat?

He felt his pockets mechanically, they were empty. Then he quickened his steps, without knowing whither he was going. He hastened towards a possible shelter. However, in that plain of snow there was nothing like a roof. There had never been a human habitation on the tableland. It was at the foot of the cliff.

The child found his way as best he could. He continued to advance, but although the muscles of his thighs seemed to be of steel, he began to tire. Instinctively he inclined eastwards. Sharp stones had wounded his heels.

He recognized nothing. He was crossing the plain of Portland from south to north. It is probable that the band with which he had come, to avoid meeting anyone, had crossed it from east to west. It was impossible for him to recognize the road.

On the plain of Portland there are, here and there, raised strips of land. The wandering child reached one of these points and stopped on it. He tried to see around him. Before him, in place of a horizon, was a vast livid opacity.

He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the descent, among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by the mist, what seemed to be either a sandbank. It was evident he must pass that way. He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a part which is called Chess Hill.

He began to descend the side of the plateau. The descent was difficult and rough. He leapt from one rock to another at the risk of a sprain, at the risk of falling into the vague depths below. Little by little it was drawing nearer the moment when he could land on the Isthmus. The child felt now and then on his brow, on his eyes, on his cheeks, something which was like the palms of cold hands on his face. These were large frozen flakes. The child was covered with them.

TROUBLED MEN ON THE TROUBLED SEA

The snowstorm is one of the mysteries of the ocean. It is the most obscure of meteorological things – obscure in every sense of the word. It is a mixture of fog and storm; and even in our days we cannot well account for the phenomenon. Hence many disasters.

One of the most dangerous components of the sea is the snowstorm. The pole produces it as it produces the aurora borealis^[15].

While the boat was in the gulf of Portland; the ocean was almost still, and the sky was yet clear. There were ten on board – three men in crew, and seven passengers, of whom two were women. The women were of no age. Of the five men who were with the two women, one was a Frenchman of Languedoc, one a Frenchman of Provence, one a Genoese; one, an old man, he who wore the sombrero, appeared to be a German. The fifth, the chief, was a Basque of the Landes from Biscarrosse. It was he who, just as the child was going on board the boat, had, with a kick of his heel, cast the plank into the sea.

This chief of the band, the captain and the two men of the crew, all four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque, sometimes Spanish, sometimes French. But generally speaking, excepting the women, all talked something like French, which was the foundation of their slang.

All the time the boat was in the gulf, the sky did not frown enough to cause the fugitives any uneasiness. They were flying, they were escaping, they were brutal. One laughed, another sang; the laugh was dry but free, the song was bad but careless.

From time to time the chief of the band came to the old man and whispered in his ear. The old man answered by a nod.

The captain passed every minute from the binnacle to the standard compass.

“We don’t even see the pointers, nor the star Antares. Nothing is distinct.”

No care troubled the other fugitives.

The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, crossed the gangway, and went on to the forecastle. He approached the old man, but not in front. He stood a little behind, with open eyes and arched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of his mouth – an attitude of curiosity hesitating between mockery and respect.

The old man said,

“Too few stars, and too much wind. The breeze continually changes its direction and blows inshore; thence it rises perpendicularly. Skipper, have you often crossed the Channel?”

“This is the first time.”

“How is that?”

“My usual cruise is to Ireland. I sail from Fontarabia to Black Harbour or to the Achill Islands. I do not know this sea at all.”

“That’s serious. Woe to him who is inexperienced on the ocean! One ought to be familiar with the Channel – the Channel is the Sphinx. Look out for shoals.”

The wind and the sea were rising.

The dark punishment of the waters, eternally tortured, was commencing. A lamentation arose from the whole main.

The wind had just set due north^[16]. Its violence was so favourable and so useful in driving them away from England that the captain had made up his mind to set all sail^[17]. The boat slipped through the foam as at a gallop, bounding from wave to wave in a gay frenzy. The fugitives were delighted, and laughed; they clapped their hands, applauded the surf, the sea, the wind, the sails, the swift progress, the flight, all unmindful of the future.

Every vestige of day had faded away. This was the moment when the child, watching from the distant cliff, lost sight of the boat. The child went north and the ship went south. All were plunged in darkness.