The Ship of Coral

mp a ridge of coral rocks ran out into the sea like a natural pier. The water lay deep off thes

he sea of an incredible blue, sailless, forlorn, came glassing shoreward in long gentl

sea has a hundred voices, Gaiety, Triumph, Strength, Sadness, Regret, the wave speaks them all. But stand on a day like this on a desolate island in the tropics and listen to the voice that steals from all that splend

voice of L

She who says to man "I walk by you from the cradle to the grave, with me you go forth from the world alone, because of me you work out your fate alone, by the shores and

which here and there floated a scrap of fucus. Just in that second, held between the sound of the sea and the mesmeric crystal of the water his mind heard Loneliness speak. Just in that moment was borne in on him dimly, and without awakening t

, the grave harmonics of the sea had whispered to him thi

idst the low bushes was beckoning and calling to him, capering, gesticulating, flinging his arms about. Yves seem

ad seemed from the rocks;21 he was almost at the centre of the islet, and now as Gaspa

ng in the air, it was a belt with a brass buckle and a pouch attached to it. He w

h

hey had been wrapped in oilskin, he had flung the oilskin away and he stood with

at rang across the islet and was a

zed and had the look of a man who, long a prisoner in darkness, had been suddenly brought face to face with a powerful

ere the ground was raised in a little mound. Amidst the bushes, white and desolate, lay some bones. They were strewn hither and thither. One might have fancied that here once lay a skeleton, the embers of a man that some wind had blown upon and scattered.

he thigh easily distinguished by even the untrained eyes of the sailors were unequal in length, th

and crumbling like a withered leaf to the touch lay near. Many, many years of exposure it must have taken to eat the metal away like that. Yves glanced at the thing without interest. "Com

him without a word, stood,

e was disappointed; there had seemed more. He began to recou

f that falls to my share; half of

words, perhaps, that caused the expression upon his broad, sun-burnt face. A heavy, unfriend

Yves, "and w

it is true, but it was only a question of luck. I might have fo

s. He was a good-hearted man, but the Breton peasant was uppermost in his nature; he had made this great haul of g

y to talk of luck-but would I have found them if I had been lying lazy on the beach, or staring into the s

walked down to the sea edge. He walked for a bit along the s

as clinging to the true grievance he had against

hundred grudges petty and large that he had against his companion joined together and formed

e with arms folded looking at the sea, the eternal crying of

-Yves,

gh the very gulls

-Yves,

sand to where Yves was sit

eet him, flashed his splendour to the very shores of the islet; each flake of foam seemed a fla

dour of the sunset on his face, his hand

uing a conversation, "you are a thief, and a son of a

roused. The belt and the pouch containing the money were l

u s

hat I ha

" replied Yves, "that say what the

knives, but the Ponantaise had not drawn his. He stood with his arms folde

on the knife, "that a Moco and a woman c

d it up as if to replace it in his belt; he seemed h

knife in its sheath and all would have been well, had not Yves, whose

language that these men fling at one another in je

hen the knife in his hand flashed through the air and Yves was on

tling noise, but Gaspard knew nothing of this. He strode up to the body of his companion with fists

was on the sand almost unstained and the stricken man shewed no wound to sp

great sun was now cut in half by the sea, dying in a scene of splend

dow far away along the sand. Then he was kneeling by the body, shaking i