第81章

I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my unlawful trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless, like a fairly decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink.The business was getting dangerous.The bands in the South were not very well organized, worked with no very definite plan, and now were beginning to be pretty closely hunted.The arrangements for the transport of supplies were going to pieces; our friends ashore were getting scared; and it was no joke to find after a day of skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing place and have to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and lurk about the coast for another week or so, unable to trust anybody and looking at every vessel we met with suspicion.Once we were ambushed by a lot of "rascally Carabineers," as Dominic called them, who hid themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of mules well in view on the seashore.Luckily, on evidence which Icould never understand, Dominic detected something suspicious.

Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with."There is a smell of treachery about this," he remarked suddenly, turning at his oar.

(He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to reconnoitre.) Icouldn't detect any smell and I regard to this day our escape on that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous.Surely some supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the Carabineers' rifles, for they missed us by yards.And as the Carabineers have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic, after swearing most horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that looks after crazy young gentlemen.Dominic believed in angels in a conventional way, but laid no claim to having one of his own.Soon afterwards, while sailing quietly at night, we found ourselves suddenly near a small coasting vessel, also without lights, which all at once treated us to a volley of rifle fire.Dominic's mighty and inspired yell: "A plat ventre!"and also an unexpected roll to windward saved all our lives.

Nobody got a scratch.We were past in a moment and in a breeze then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase.

But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: "Le metier se gate." I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not altogether spoiled, had seen its best days.But I did not care.

In fact, for my purpose it was rather better, a more potent influence; like the stronger intoxication of raw spirit.A volley in the dark after all was not such a bad thing.Only a moment before we had received it, there, in that calm night of the sea full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been looking at an enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the tawny hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with brilliants and with ruby gleams all along its shaft.That jewelled ornament, which I remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in my sleep.Often Idreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by hand, like a dart.It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always woke up before it struck.Always.Invariably.It never had a chance.A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some day - or night.

At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp.The little vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child, the sea itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide.It took away all that there was in me of independent life, but just failed to take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit for no one else but unrepentant sinners.Even Dominic failed me, his moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our common enterprise.The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning thunder-clap - and, one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of his own.I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man.I hadn't any money in my pocket.I hadn't even the bundle and the stick of a destitute wayfarer.I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart was faint within me.My attire was such that I daren't approach the rank of fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which one suddenly drove away while I looked.The other I gave up to the fortunate of this earth.I didn't believe in my power of persuasion.I had no powers.I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the uproarious streets.Bedlam was loose in them.It was the time of Carnival.

Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in an astonishing way.I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life, I had lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my companions, had parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link with life, my touch with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone - but a small penknife and a latchkey had never parted company with me.

With the latchkey I opened the door of refuge.The hall wore its deaf-and-dumb air, its black-and-white stillness.