Five minutes later he was on deck.
La Belle2 Arlésienne, steered3 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 the cloud turban of Mont Pelée coloured by the dawn, and followed the tumbling woods, the cascades4 of leaping foliage5 high, far off, dark in shadow, falling to the hillside city; and the city breaking from the woods, falling street by street to the harbour’s edge; palm-tops peeping above the red-tiled roofs; houses, shadows, palms; tracery of gardens, squares, step flights from street to street; old moss-grown flights of steps, old gardens and scraps6 of gardens giving shelter to the grenadilla and the fleur d’amour; old houses, heavy-built and lightly coloured, all stretching from the great high woods to the very edge of the shadowy harbour in whose depths the blue of night still lay.
The blue of night—though the sky above Pelée was ablaze7 with the morning blue. Over on the east of the island at Grande Anse the morning was already full and splendid, but here the shadow of peak and morn held everything in magical chiara oscuro. The city, seen as though through a vague veil of gauze, seemed asleep, yet84 it was burning with early morning life, and Gaspard, as he watched, could see the moving figures of people, forms trickling8 down the steep flights of steps leading from street to street, and swarming9 by the sea-steps and harbour side.
Held, just for a moment, in this curious twilight10 lingering in the shadow of Pelée, whilst all the sea world beyond flashed to the sun-blaze of the tropics, the old sea-city of St. Pierre hanging, literally11, between sky and sea, between dawn and night, between the present and the past, shewed to the mind those pictures of suggestion which lie in tapestry12 and verse.
Gaspard had never seen anything at all like this. He had seen many a tropic town where the galvanized tin roof of the trader, or the rigid13 outlines of the Methodist meeting house broke crudely through the beauty of palmiste and orange. But St. Pierre lay before him beautiful, absolutely beautiful, like a dream city set in Wonderland.
Nothing could be more wonderful than those torrential woods far up above the houses, woods of balisier and palm, tamarind, ceiba, and giant fern; lianas cable thick, air shoots, all climbing in the twilight, and leading the eyes to the slopes of Pelée and the peak, cloud-wreathed and burning in the blue.
Nothing could be more strange or more poetical14 than the city reaching from these woods to the shadowy sea.
Other vessels15 were anchored in the harbour, boats were putting out from the shore; now, clear and sharp-cut, through the vague noises of early morning came the note of a bugle16 from the fort, and from a sailing-ship away to starboard the clank of capstan pawls and the cry of sailors hauling on the halyards.
With and through everything came the perfume of the land, earth and tropic flowers, jasmine and vanilla17 scents19, mixed with the scent18 of the sea.
85 Gaspard turned from the city and looked westward20. Beyond the shadow of the island the sea lay in the bright daylight, shewing beneath the emerald ring of the horizon the virginal blue of early morning.
As he turned, Sagesse left the deck-house and stood for a moment looking on the land before speaking to his companion.
“Better than the stokehold,” said the Captain, who had put on a clean suit of white drill, and a shore-going and holiday manner; “better than the engine-room, vé! Look, the canotiers are putting off and the port officers will be aboard us before we have finished breakfast.”
Jules appeared, as he spoke21, from the caboose, bearing a steaming coffee-pot; they went into the deck-house for the meal, and before it was half through and, as if to bear out the truth of Sagesse’s prediction, the port officers arrived.
They came into the deck-house, where Sagesse served them with vermouth and cigarettes; they seemed to know Sagesse as a friend, and bill of lading or bill of health seemed to trouble them very little as far as Gaspard could judge, who, in the middle of the cigarette smoking and exchange of news, left Sagesse to his friends and came on deck.
He found a new St. Pierre. Colour had stolen over the slopes of Pelée; light had stretched out her hand and torn away the veil of twilight. A burst of blue struck him in the face as he left the dingy22 deck-house. A sky of blue, a sea of blue, triumphant23, crystalline, dazzling, and in the midst of this world of leaping lazulite, St. Pierre standing24 like a dreamer awakened by the sea.
Awakened from where the high woods were rocking and singing in the morning wind, to where the breeze-swept86 harbour was lipping ship side and quay25 with the flash of sapphire26 satin.
One could see, so clear was the air, the tiles on the red-tiled roofs and the palm fronds27 bursting above them; a flag was flickering28 above some consulate29, the palm-tops were dancing to the breeze that bore on its hot breath the scent of earth and trees and the sounds of the city that seemed less a city than a daring aquarelle, blindingly beautiful, triumphantly30 bright.
Round the Belle Arlésienne canotiers were paddling; banana-coloured children in little coffin-shaped canoes made out of old packing-cases, canned meat cases, anything in the form of a box that could be cut into the form of a canoe. They were chattering31 to the black sailors, and when they saw Gaspard they shouted to him to fling them coins to dive for, but before he could put his hand in his pocket Sagesse and the port officers left the deck-house.
The newcomers had offered to row Sagesse and Gaspard ashore32, and the captain had evidently told them of the fate of the Rhone, for, as they crossed the harbour, Gaspard found himself an object of interest and plied33 with a hundred questions. At the sight of Sagesse the little canotiers had dispersed34 in every direction, and now, as they rowed, Gaspard could hear the thin voices of the children chanting a song; he caught the word “Sagesse” repeated over and over again, but the lisping patois35 and the breeze dimmed all else but the spirit of the ballad—Derision. Sagesse was not, evidently, a favorite with the canotiers of St. Pierre, yet, to look at him seated by the port doctor, a cigar in his mouth and his thumbs stuck in his waist-belt, one might have fancied him a man to whom children would run by instinct.
He was in grand good humour this morning; so was87 Gaspard; so, too, seemed the port officers. The joyous36 city seemed to radiate gaiety; the languor37 of midday had not yet fallen upon it and it laughed like a child awakened by a kiss on a bright morning.
The harbour-side was crowded; naked children, half-naked men, black men, banana-coloured men, apricot-coloured men, chattering in that French worn smooth which is the language of the French West Indies, a language in which Monsieur becomes Missie, Maman, Manmam, and France, Fouance.
Amidst the ‘longshoremen, the idlers, the canotiers, fishermen, and boatmen, strayed the forms of a few women, bright as tropic birds, graceful38 in striped foulards and jupes of exquisite39 colours, their wasp-yellow turbans striking the eye forcibly, the brightest points in a picture surcharged with colour and blinding light.
Sinbad never landed at a stranger port than this, so vividly40 real, so far removed from the commonplace, so filled with the presence of the past.
Romance sat on the very sea-steps, and as Gaspard landed he felt what every man who ever landed at St. Pierre must have felt vividly or vaguely—her touch.
Sagesse, bidding good-day to the port officers, struck uptown accompanied by Gaspard. Uptown, by flights of old steps, worn, moss-grown, shadowed by the black shadows of houses and roofed with a ribbon of blinding azure41 sky, everywhere the sound of running water from the thousand conduits and fountains, everywhere the sound of the sea echoing as in the whorl of a great shell.
The stepways led to streets, lines of blazing light and colour, verandahed, broken by black house shadows, filled with coloured people of all shades, all hues42, from the muletresse to the chabine; all busy, moving, drifting,88 chattering, buying or selling, finely formed, graceful as the palmistes.
Then more steps haunted by fountain and sea sounds, and they entered a river of light—the Rue43 Victor Hugo.
Gaspard, as he reached the street, looked back down the steep and twilight vico they had ascended44, and saw the harbour, liquid shadow on which, seeming suspended in air, floated La Belle Arlésienne.
It was like a picture closing the first chapter of his life; the sea, and the island, and the ever-crying gulls45, dead Yves, the stokehold, Marseilles, all lay there. Here was a new land and the beginning of a new existence. The sea, the island, the man he had slain—all beyond there. It all seemed remote, done with forever; yet it was close to him, potently46 alive in the form of Captain Sagesse, and able to stretch out a hand and touch him on the shoulder if so it chose.
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1
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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2
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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4
cascades
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| 倾泻( cascade的名词复数 )； 小瀑布（尤指一连串瀑布中的一支）； 瀑布状物； 倾泻（或涌出）的东西 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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7
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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8
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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9
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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10
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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11
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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12
tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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14
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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15
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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16
bugle
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| n.军号，号角，喇叭；v.吹号，吹号召集 | |
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17
vanilla
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| n.香子兰，香草 | |
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18
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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19
scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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20
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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21
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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22
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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23
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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24
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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25
quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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26
sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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27
fronds
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| n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
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28
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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29
consulate
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| n.领事馆 | |
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30
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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31
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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32
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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33
plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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34
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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35
patois
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| n.方言；混合语 | |
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36
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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37
languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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38
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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39
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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40
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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41
azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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42
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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43
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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44
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
gulls
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| n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 ) | |
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46
potently
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