Part 7 (1/2)
--I tell you what happened to me, monsieur,--old Bartoli told me one day, while we were eating,--it was five years ago, at this very table, one winter evening, just like this one. That night, there were just the two of us, me and a fellow keeper called Tcheco.... The others were ash.o.r.e, or sick, or else on leave.... I can't remember, now.... We were finis.h.i.+ng our dinners, quite contentedly.... Suddenly, my fellow keeper stopped eating, looked at me with strange eyes, and fell forward onto the table with outstretched arms. I went to him; I shook him; I called his name:
”--Hey Tche!... Hey Tche!...
”No response! He was dead!... You can't imagine how I felt! I stayed there, idiot-like and trembling, next to the body for more than an hour. Then suddenly, I remembered,--The Light!--I only just had time to climb up to light the lantern--it was already getting dark....
”What a night, monsieur! The sea and the wind, they just didn't sound like they usually do. All the time somebody seemed to be calling to me from down the stairway.... I became frenzied; my mouth dried. But you couldn't have made me go down there again.... Oh no! I was too scared of the dead body. However, in the small hours, some of my courage returned. I went down and carried my mate back to his bed, covered him over with a sheet, said a short prayer, and then ran to raise the alarm.
”Unfortunately, the sea was too heavy; I shouted as loudly as I could, again and again, but to no avail, n.o.body came.... So, I was alone in the lighthouse with poor Tcheco, and for G.o.d knows how long. I was hoping to be able to keep him close to me until the boat came, but after three days that became impossible.... What should I have done?
Carried him outside? Buried him? The rock was too hard and there are murders of crows on the island. It was a shame to leave a Christian to them. And then I decided to take him down to one of the lodges in the lazaretto.... That sad duty lasted a whole afternoon and, yes, it took some courage.... Look here, Monsieur, even today, when I go down to that part of the island through an afternoon gale, I feel that the dead man is still there, on my shoulders....”
Poor old Bartoli! Sweat ran down his forehead just thinking about it.
And so, our meals pa.s.sed in long conversations about the lighthouse, and the sea, with tales of s.h.i.+pwrecks, and Corsican bandits.... Then, as night fell, the keeper of the first watch lit his hand-lamp, took his pipe, flask, and a red-edged, thick volume of Plutarch, which was the sum total of the _Sanguinaires'_ library, and went down out of sight. A moment later, there was a crash of chains, pulleys, and heavy weights as the clock was wound up.
While this was going on, I went to sit outside on the terrace. The sun, already well down, hurried its descent into the water, dragging the whole skyline with it. The wind freshened; the island turned violet. In the sky a big bird pa.s.sed slowly near me; it was the eagle homing to the Genoese tower.... Gradually, a sea mist got up. Soon, nothing could be seen except a white ridge of sea-fog around the island. Suddenly, a great flood of light emerged above my head from the lighthouse. The clear ray left the island in complete darkness as it fell far out to sea, and I, too, was lost to sight in the night, under the great luminous sweeps which barely caught me as they pa.s.sed.... But the wind was freshening again. Time to go indoors. I groped to close the huge door, I secured the iron bars, and then, still feeling my way, took the small cast-iron stairs, which trembled and rang under my feet, to the top of the lighthouse. Here, as you can imagine, there was plenty of light.
Picture a gigantic lamp with six rows of wicks with the inner facets of the lantern arranged around them, some with an enormous crystal gla.s.s lens, others opened onto a large fixed gla.s.s panel which protected the flame from the wind.... When I came in, I was completely dazzled, and the coppers, tins, white metal reflectors, rotating walls of convex crystal gla.s.s, with large blue-tinged circles, and all the flickering lights, gave me a touch of vertigo.
However, gradually my eyes got used to it, and I settled down at the foot of the lamp, beside the keeper who was reading his Plutarch--for fear of falling asleep....
Outside, all was dark and desperate. On the small turning balcony, a maddening gust of wind howled. The lighthouse creaked; the sea roared.
Out on the point, the breakers on the shoals sounded like cannon shots.... At times, an invisible finger tapped at the panes; it was some bird of the night, drawn by the light, braining itself against the gla.s.s....
Inside the sparkling, hot lantern, nothing was heard except the crackling flame, the dripping oil, the chain unwinding and the monotonous intoning of the life of Demetrius of Phaleron....
At midnight, the keeper stood up, took a last peek at the wicks and we went below. We pa.s.sed the keeper of the second watch, rubbing his eyes as he came up. We gave him the flask and the Petrarch. Then, before retiring, we briefly entered the locker-room below, which was full of chains, heavy weights, metal tanks, and rope. By the light of his small lamp, the keeper wrote in the large lighthouse log, always left open at the last entry:
_Midnight. Heavy seas. Tempest. s.h.i.+p at sea_.
THE WRECK OF THE _SEMILLANTE_
The other night the mistral took us off course to the Corsican coast, so to speak. Let's stay there, as it were, while I tell you of an horrific event, often talked about by the local fishermen during their evening get-togethers, the details of which came to me by chance.
About two or three years ago, I was out sailing on the Sardinian Sea with seven or eight customs' men. A tough trip for a landlubber! There hadn't been a single fair day in the whole of March. The wind relentlessly pursued us and the sea never, ever, let up.
One evening, as we were running before the storm, our boat found refuge in the opening to the Straits of Bonifacio, in the midst of an archipelago.... They were not a welcoming sight: huge bare rocks covered with birds, a few clumps of absinth, some lenticular scrub, and here and there pieces of rotting wood half buried in the silt. But, believe me, for a night's stay, these ominous rocks were a much better prospect than the half-covered deckhouse of our old boat, where the waves made themselves very much at home. In fact, we were pleased to see the islands.
The crew had lit a fire for the bouillabaisse, by the time we were all ash.o.r.e. The Master hailed me and pointed out a small outcrop of white masonry almost lost in the fog at the far end of the island:
--Are you coming to the cemetery? he said.
--A cemetery, Master Lionetti! Where are we then?
--The Lavezzi Islands, monsieur. The six hundred souls from the _Semillante_ are buried here, at the very spot where their frigate foundered ten years ago.... Poor souls, they don't get many visitors; the least we can do is to go and say h.e.l.lo to them, while we're here....
--Of course, willingly, skipper.