The Prospector (20 page)

No one is really sleeping tonight. On the deck the men sit up, talking and smoking all night long, and the helmsman remains seated at the stern, watching the reflections of the stars on the waters of the atoll. Even the captain stays up, sitting in his armchair. From my place next to the mizzen mast I can see the tip of his cigarette glowing from time to time. The sea breeze sweeps away the words of the sailors, mingling them with the rumbling of the waves on the reefs. Here the sky is immense and pure, as if there were no other land in the world, as if everything were about to begin.

I sleep a little, my head resting on my arm, and when I awaken it's dawn. The light is transparent, just like the water in the lagoon, azure-coloured, iridescent. I haven't seen such a beautiful morning since Boucan. The rumour of the sea has grown louder, it's as if it is the very sound of the broadening daylight. Casting a look around I see that most of the sailors are still sleeping, just as they had dozed off, lying on the deck or sitting with their backs against the bulwark. Bradmer is no longer in his armchair. Maybe he's writing in his alcove. The black helmsman alone is still standing in the same place at the stern. He's watching the day break. I draw nearer to him to speak, but he speaks first, saying:

‘Is there any place more beautiful in the world?'

His voice is gruff, like that of a man who is deeply moved.

‘When I came here for the first time I was still a child. Now I am an old man, but nothing has changed. You might think that not a day has passed.'

‘Why did the captain come here?'

He looks at me as if my question doesn't make any sense.

‘Why it was for you! He wanted you to see Saint Brandon, he was doing you a favour.'

He shrugs his shoulders and says nothing more. He undoubtedly knows I didn't accept the offer to stay aboard the
Zeta
, and that's why I no longer interest him. He sinks back into his contemplation of the sun rising over the immense atoll, of the light that seems to be springing from the water and rising up towards the cloudless sky. Birds are flitting around in the sky, cormorants grazing along the surface of the water where their shadows glide, petrels high up in the wind, tiny silvery specks whirling about. They loop up, pass one another, squawk and cackle so loudly they awaken the men on deck, who begin to chat in turn.

A little later I learn why Bradmer has made the stopover in Saint Brandon. The pirogue is lowered into the sea with six crew members. The captain is at the tiller and the helmsman standing in the front, harpoon in hand. The pirogue slips noiselessly over the water in the lagoon, towards La Perle. Leaning over the front of the pirogue, near the helmsman, I soon glimpse the dark shapes of tortoises near the beach. We move silently nearer. When the pirogue is upon them, they see us, but it is too late. With a quick gesture the helmsman throws the harpoon that pierces the shell with a crunch and blood spurts out. With a savage cry the men pull on the oars and the pirogue lurches towards the shore of the island, with the tortoise dragging behind. When the pirogue is near the beach, two sailors jump into the water, pull the harpoon out of the tortoise and turn it on its back on the sand.

We are already heading back out into the lagoon, where the other tortoises await, fearlessly. Several times the helmsman's harpoon pierces the shells of tortoises. Blood flows in rivulets over the white sandy beach, clouds the sea. We must work quickly before the smell of blood attracts the sharks that will drive the tortoises towards the shoals. On the white beach the tortoises are finishing the process of dying. There are ten of them. Striking them with machetes, the sailors hack them into pieces, line up the hunks of meat on the sand. They load them into the pirogue to be smoked on board the ship, because there is no wood on the islands. Here the land is sterile, a place where creatures of the sea come to die.

When the slaughter is over, everyone gets back into the pirogue, hands covered with blood. I hear the sharp cries of the birds fighting over the tortoise shells. The light is blinding, I feel dizzy. I can't wait to get away from this island, this bloodstained lagoon. The rest of the day, on the deck of the
Zeta
, the men busy themselves around the brazier where the hunks of meat are grilling. But I can't forget what happened, I refuse to eat in the evening. Tomorrow morning at dawn the
Zeta
will leave the atoll and nothing will be left of our passage, only the broken shells that the seabirds have already picked clean.

I've been away for so long! A month, maybe more? I've never been so long without seeing Laure, without Mam. When I said goodbye to Laure, when I spoke to her for the first time about my journey to Rodrigues, she gave me her savings to help me pay for my passage. But I saw that dark flash in her eyes, the gleam of anger that said, we might never see each other again. She said
adieu
to me and not
au revoir
, and she didn't want to go down to the harbour with me. I had to live through all of these days at sea, this light, the burning of the sun and wind, these nights, before I could understand. Now I know that the
Zeta
is carrying me away on an adventure of no return. Who can know what his destiny holds? The secret awaiting me, the one that I alone must discover, is written here. It's marked in the sea, in the foam capping the waves, in the bright midday sky, in the unchanging patterns of the constellations. How can I decipher it? I think of the
Argo
again, how it sailed on uncharted seas, guided by the serpent of stars. The vessel was fulfilling its own destiny, not that of the men on board. Of what matter were the treasures, the territories? Did they not have to find their own destinies – some in combat or in the glory of love, others in death? As I think of the
Argo
, the deck of the
Zeta
has suddenly changed, been transfigured. And the dark-skinned Comorian and Indian sailors, the helmsman always standing at the wheel with his lava-stone features and unblinking eyes, and even squint-eyed Bradmer with his drunkard's face, haven't they also been roaming from island to island for ever in search of their destinies?

Are the reflections of the sun glinting off the dancing waves making me lose my reason? I feel as if I'm outside time, in some other, very different world, so far away from everything I've ever known that I'll never again be able to find what I left behind. That's why I feel this dizziness, this nausea: I'm afraid of giving up what I once was and never being able to turn back. Each hour, each day that passes is like the waves of the sea that come running up against the stem, lift the hull briefly, then disappear in its wake. Each of them is taking me farther away from the time I love, from Mam's voice, from Laure's presence.

Captain Bradmer comes up to me this morning at the stern of the ship. ‘Tomorrow or the day after, we'll reach Rodrigues.'

I repeat, ‘Tomorrow or the day after?'

‘Tomorrow if the wind keeps up.'

So the journey is coming to an end. That's undoubtedly why everything seems so different.

The men have finished the provisions of meat. As for myself, I ate only spiced rice, that flesh horrifies me. For several days now I've felt a fever coming over me in the evening. Rolled up in my blanket down in the hold I lie shivering in spite of the sweltering heat. What will I do if my body betrays me? In my trunk I find the phial of quinine, purchased before my departure, and swallow a pill with my saliva.

It has grown dark without my noticing.

Late in the night I wake up soaked in sweat. Next to me, sitting cross-legged with his back leaning against the hull, is a man whose black face is lit strangely by the lamplight. Raising myself up on one elbow, I recognize the helmsman, his fixed gaze. He speaks to me in his sing-song voice, but I can't really understand the meaning of his words. I hear him asking me questions about the treasure I am going to look for in Rodrigues. How does he know about it? Captain Bradmer must have told him. He asks me questions and I don't answer, but that doesn't bother him. He just waits, then asks another question, and still another. Finally he grows disinterested in the subject and begins talking about Saint Brandon, where he says he will go to die. I imagine his body sprawled out among the tortoise shells. I drift back to sleep, lulled by his voice.

The island appears out on the horizon. It wells up from the sea in the yellow evening sky, with its tall blue mountains against the dark sea. Perhaps the seabirds crying over our heads was what first alerted me. I go up to the bow to get a better look. The sails billowing in the west wind are causing the stem to skittle after the waves. The ship drops into the troughs, surges up again. The horizon is very clear, pulled taut. The island rises and falls behind the waves, and the peaks of the mountains seem to be born of the ocean depths.

Never has a landscape made such an impression on me: it resembles the peaks of Trois Mamelles, but higher still, it forms an impassable wall. Casimir is beside me at the front. He happily informs me about the mountains, tells me their names.

Now the sun is hidden behind the island. The tall mountains stand out aggressively against the pale sky.

The captain has the crew reduce sail. The men climb up to the yards to reach the reefs. We are heading towards the dark island at the same speed as the waves, the jibs shining in the twilight like the wings of seabirds. As the ship approaches the coast I can feel anxiety welling up inside. Something is coming to an end, freedom, the joy of the sea. Now I'll have to find shelter, talk, ask questions, be in contact with the land.

Night falls very slowly. Now we are in the shadows of the high mountains. At around seven o'clock we go through the pass and head for the red lantern lit at the end of the jetty. The ship sails along the reefs. I can hear the voice of a sailor taking soundings starboard, calling out the measures, ‘Seventeen, seventeen, fifteen, fifteen…'

At the end of the channel the stone jetty begins.

I hear the anchor drop and the chain unreeling. The
Zeta
is at rest along the wharf and, without waiting for the gangplank, the men jump down from the ship, start talking loudly with the waiting crowd. I'm standing on deck and for the first time in days, in months maybe, I'm fully dressed, I've slipped on my shoes. My trunk is packed at my feet. The
Zeta
is leaving tomorrow, in the afternoon, when the tides have changed.

I say goodbye to Captain Bradmer, he shakes my hand, evidently doesn't know what to say. I'm the one who wishes him luck. The black helmsman is already down below, he must be stretched out, his fixed gaze watching the sooty ceiling.

On the wharf, the blasts of wind make me stagger under the weight of the trunk on my shoulder. I turn, take one last look at the silhouette of the
Zeta
against the pale sky, with its inclined masts and the network of its lines. Maybe I should turn around and go back on board. I'd be in Port Louis in four days, I'd take the train, I'd walk through the drizzling rain towards the house at Forest Side, I'd hear Mam's voice, I'd see Laure.

A man is waiting for me on the wharf. In the glimmer of the lantern I recognize Casimir's athletic shape. He takes my trunk and walks along with me. He's going to show me the only hotel on the island, near the Government House, a hotel run by a Chinaman, one can eat there too, apparently. I walk behind him in the darkness through the narrow streets of Port Mathurin. I'm in Rodrigues.

That's how, one morning in the winter of 1911 (in August, I believe, or at the beginning of September) I find myself in the hills overlooking English Bay, where all of my explorations will be carried out.

For weeks, months now, I've wandered Rodrigues from the south, where the other pass opens facing Gombrani Island, all the way to the chaotic black lava of Malagache Bay in the north, by way of the high mountains in the middle of the island, through Mangues, Patate, Montagne Bon Dié. The notes copied from Pingré's book were my guide. ‘To the east of the large harbour,' he writes in 1761, ‘we find insufficient water to sustain our pirogues, or else the water communicating with the open sea was too rough to sustain such a fragile vessel. Monsieur de Pingré, therefore, sent the pirogues back along the same route they had been brought, with orders to join us the following day at the
Enfoncement des Grandes Pierres à Chaux
(Limestone Embayment)…' And elsewhere: ‘The Quatre Passes mountains are very steep, and as there are almost no coral reefs and the shore is directly exposed to the wind, the sea crashes so violently against the coast that it would be particularly imprudent to attempt to cross here.' Read in the wavering light of my candle, in the hotel room in Port Mathurin, Pingré's account reminds me of the famous letter written by an old sailor imprisoned in the Bastille, who put his father on the trail of the treasure: ‘On the west coast of the island, in a place where the sea crashes against the coast, there is a river. Follow the river, you will find a source, next to the source, a tamarind tree. Eighteen feet from the tamarind tree begins the stone work that hides an immense treasure.'

Very early this morning I walked along the coast with a kind of feverish haste. I crossed Jenner Bridge, which marks the city limits of Port Mathurin. Farther along, I waded across the Bamboo River in front of the little cemetery. After that point there are no more houses and the path along the coast grows narrower. To the right I take the road that leads up to the buildings of the Cable & Wireless, the English telegraph company, at the summit of Venus Point.

I skirt the telegraph buildings, perhaps out of fear of encountering one of those Englishmen that slightly frighten the people of Rodrigues.

Heart racing, I go all the way to the top of the hill. This is the place – I'm sure of it now – where Pingré came to observe the orbit of Venus in 1761, long before the astronomers, accompanying Lieutenant Neate who named Venus Point in 1874.