The Pools of Silence Part 5

"_That!_" cried Schaunard. "Why, what on earth could you want with such an obsolete weapon as that?"

"Tell me--does this thing hit harder, gun for gun--not weight for weight, mind you--but gun for gun--than that double-barrel you are holding in your hands?"

"Oh, yes," said Schaunard, "it hits harder, just as a cannon would hit harder, but----"

"I'll have her," said Adams. "I've taken a fancy to her. See here, Captain Berselius is paying for my guns; they are his, part of the expedition--I want this as my own, and I'll pay you for her out of my own pocket. How much is she?"

Schaunard, whose fifty years of trading had explained to him the fact that when an American takes a whim into his head it is best for all parties to let him have his own way, ran his fingers through his beard.

"The thing has no price," said he. "It is a curiosity. But if you must have it--well, I will let you have it for two hundred francs."

"Done," said Adams. "Have you any cartridges?"

"Oh, yes," replied Schaunard. "Heaps. That is to say, I have the old cartridges, and I can have a couple of hundred of them emptied and re-filled and percussioned. Ah, well, monsieur, you must have your own way. Armand, take the gun; have it attended to and packed. And now that monsieur has his play-toy," finished the old man, with one of his silent little laughs, "let us come to business."

They did, and nearly an hour was spent whilst the American chose a double hammerless-ejector cordite rifle and a .256 sporting Mannlicher, for Schaunard was a man who, when he took an interest in a customer, could be very interesting.

When business was concluded Schaunard gave his customer various tips as to the treatment of guns. "And now," said he, opening the door as Adams was taking his departure, "I will give you one more piece of advice about this expedition. It is a piece of private advice, and I will trust you not to tell the Captain that I gave it to you."

"Yes. What is the advice?"

"Don't go."

Adams laughed as he turned on his heel, and Schaunard laughed as he closed the door.

A pa.s.ser-by might have imagined that the two men had just exchanged a good joke.

Before Adams had taken three steps, the door of the shop re-opened, and Schaunard's voice called again.

"Monsieur."

"Yes?" said Adams, turning.

"You need not pay me for the gun till you come back."

"Right," said Adams, laughing. "I will call in and pay you for it when I come back. _Au revoir._"

"_Adieu._"

CHAPTER V

Ma.r.s.eILLES

On the day of departure Berselius was entertained at _dejeuner_ by the Cerele Militaire. He brought Adams with him as a guest.

Nearly all the sporting members of the great club were present to speed the man who after Schillings was reckoned on the Continent the most adventurous big-game hunter in the world.

Despite what Stenhouse, Duthil, and Schaunard had said, Adams by this time inclined to a half-liking for Berselius; the man seemed so far from and unconscious of the little things of the world, so dest.i.tute of pettiness, that the half liking which always accompanies respect could not but find a place in Adams's mind.

Guest at a table surrounded by sixty of the wealthiest and most powerful officers of a military nation, Berselius did not forget his companion, but introduced him with painstaking care to the chief men present, included him in his speech of thanks, and made him feel that though he was taking Berselius's pay, he was his friend and on a perfect social equality with him.

Adams felt this keenly. On qualifying first he had obtained an appointment as travelling physician to an American, a prominent member of the New York smart set, a man of twenty-two, a motorist, a yachtsman, clean shaved as an actor and smug as a butler, one of those men who make the great American nation so small in the eyes of the world--the world that cannot see beyond the servants' hall antics of New York society to the great plains where the Adamses hew the wood and draw the water, build the cities and bridge the rivers, and lay the iron roads, making rail-heads of the roar of the Atlantic and the thunder of the Pacific.

This gentleman treated Adams as a paid attendant and in such a manner that Adams one morning lifted him from his bed by the slack of his silk pajamas and all but drowned him in his own bath.

He could not but remember the incident as he sat watching Berselius so calm, so courtly, so absolutely dest.i.tute of mannerism, so incontestably the superior, in some magnetic way, of all the other men who were present.

Maxine and M. Pinchon, the secretary, were to accompany them to Ma.r.s.eilles.

A cold, white Paris fog covered the city that night as they drove to the station, and the fog detonators and horns followed them as they glided out slowly from beneath the great gla.s.s roof. Slowly at first, then more swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still, breaking from the fog-banked Seine valley, through snarling tunnel and chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees, mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little winking towns; and now, as if drawn by the magnetic south, swaying to the rock-a-bye of speed, aiming for the lights of Dijon far away south, to the tune of the wheels, "seventy-miles-an-hour--seventy-miles-an-hour."

Civilization, whatever else she has done, has written one poem, the "Rapide." True to herself, she makes it pay a dividend, and prost.i.tutes it to the service of stockbrokers, society folk, and gamblers bound for Monaco--but what a poem it is that we snore through between a day in Paris and a day in Ma.r.s.eilles. A poem, swiftly moving, musical with speed, a song built up of songs, telling of Paris, its chill and winter fog, of the winter fields, the poplar trees and mist; vineyards of the Cote d'Or; Provence with the dawn upon it, Tarascon blowing its morning bugle to the sun; the Rhone, and the vineyards, and the olives, and the white, white roads; ending at last in that triumphant blast of music, light and colour, Ma.r.s.eilles.

_La Joconde_, Berselius's yacht, was berthed at the Messagerie wharf, and after _dejeuner_ at the Hotel Noailles, they took their way there on foot.

Adams had never seen the south before as Ma.r.s.eilles shows it. The vivid light and the black shadows, the variegated crowd of the Canabier Prolongue had for him an "Arabian Nights" fascination, but the wharves held a deeper fascination still.

Ma.r.s.eilles draws its most subtle charm from far away in the past. Beaked triremes have rubbed their girding cables against the wharves of the old Phocee; the sunshine of a thousand years has left some trace of its gold, a mirage in the air chilled by the mistral and perfumed by the ocean.

At Ma.r.s.eilles took place the meeting between Mary Magdalen and Laeta Acilia, so delightfully fabled by Anatole France. The Count of Monte Cristo landed here after he had discovered his treasure, and here Caderouse after the infamy at "La Reservee" watched old Dantes starving to death. Mult.i.tudes of ships, fabled and real, have pa.s.sed from the harbour to countries curious and strange, but never one of them to a stranger country than that to which _La Joconde_ was to bear Berselius and his companion.

Gay as Naples with colour, piercing the blue sky with a thousand spars, fluttering the flags of all nations to the wind, shot through with the sharp rattle of winch-chains, and perfumed with garlic, vanilla, fumes of coal tar, and the tang of the sea, the wharves of Ma.r.s.eilles lay before the travellers, a great counter eternally vibrating to the thunder of trade; bales of carpets from the Levant, tons of cheeses from Holland, wood from Norway, copra, rice, tobacco, corn, silks from China and j.a.pan, cotton from Lancashire; all pouring in to the tune of the winch-pauls, the cry of the stevedores, and the bugles of Port Saint Jean, shrill beneath the blue sky and triumphant as the crowing of the Gallic c.o.c.k.

Between the breaks in the shipping one could see the sea-gulls fishing and the harbour flashing, here spangled with coal tar, here whipped to deepest sapphire by the mistral; the junk shops, grog shops, parrot shops, rope-walks, ships' stores and factories lining the quays, each lending a perfume, a voice, or a sc.r.a.p of colour to the air vibrating with light, vibrating with sound, shot through with voices; hammer blows from the copper sheathers in the dry docks, the rolling of drums from Port St.

Nicholas, the roaring of grain elevators, rattling of winch-chains, trumpeting of ship sirens, mewing of gulls, the bells of Notre Dame and the bells of St. Victor, all fused, orchestrated, into one triumphant symphony beneath the clear blue sky and the trade flags of the world.

_La Joconde_ was berthed beside a Messagerie boat which they had to cross to reach her.

She was a palatial cruising yacht of twelve hundred tons' burden, built somewhat on the lines of Drexel's _La Margharita_, but with less width of funnel.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when they went on board; all the luggage had arrived, steam was up, the port arrangements had been made, and Berselius determined to start at once.

Maxine kissed him, then she turned to Adams.

"_Bon voyage._"

"Good-bye," said Adams.

He held her hand for a fraction of a second after his grasp had relaxed.

Then she was standing on the deck of the Messagerie boat, waving good-bye across the lane of blue water widening between _La Joconde_ and her berth mate.

At the harbour mouth, looking back across the blue wind-swept water, he fancied he could still see her, a microscopic speck in the great picture of terraced Ma.r.s.eilles, with its windows, houses, flags, and domes glittering and burning in the sun.