Letters from my Windmill Part 7

--I tell you what happened to me, monsieur,--old Bartoli told me one day, while we were eating,--it was five years ago, at this very table, one winter evening, just like this one. That night, there were just the two of us, me and a fellow keeper called Tcheco.... The others were ash.o.r.e, or sick, or else on leave.... I can't remember, now.... We were finis.h.i.+ng our dinners, quite contentedly.... Suddenly, my fellow keeper stopped eating, looked at me with strange eyes, and fell forward onto the table with outstretched arms. I went to him; I shook him; I called his name:

"--Hey Tche!... Hey Tche!...

"No response! He was dead!... You can't imagine how I felt! I stayed there, idiot-like and trembling, next to the body for more than an hour. Then suddenly, I remembered,--The Light!--I only just had time to climb up to light the lantern--it was already getting dark....

"What a night, monsieur! The sea and the wind, they just didn't sound like they usually do. All the time somebody seemed to be calling to me from down the stairway.... I became frenzied; my mouth dried. But you couldn't have made me go down there again.... Oh no! I was too scared of the dead body. However, in the small hours, some of my courage returned. I went down and carried my mate back to his bed, covered him over with a sheet, said a short prayer, and then ran to raise the alarm.

"Unfortunately, the sea was too heavy; I shouted as loudly as I could, again and again, but to no avail, n.o.body came.... So, I was alone in the lighthouse with poor Tcheco, and for G.o.d knows how long. I was hoping to be able to keep him close to me until the boat came, but after three days that became impossible.... What should I have done?

Carried him outside? Buried him? The rock was too hard and there are murders of crows on the island. It was a shame to leave a Christian to them. And then I decided to take him down to one of the lodges in the lazaretto.... That sad duty lasted a whole afternoon and, yes, it took some courage.... Look here, Monsieur, even today, when I go down to that part of the island through an afternoon gale, I feel that the dead man is still there, on my shoulders...."

Poor old Bartoli! Sweat ran down his forehead just thinking about it.

And so, our meals pa.s.sed in long conversations about the lighthouse, and the sea, with tales of s.h.i.+pwrecks, and Corsican bandits.... Then, as night fell, the keeper of the first watch lit his hand-lamp, took his pipe, flask, and a red-edged, thick volume of Plutarch, which was the sum total of the _Sanguinaires'_ library, and went down out of sight. A moment later, there was a crash of chains, pulleys, and heavy weights as the clock was wound up.

While this was going on, I went to sit outside on the terrace. The sun, already well down, hurried its descent into the water, dragging the whole skyline with it. The wind freshened; the island turned violet. In the sky a big bird pa.s.sed slowly near me; it was the eagle homing to the Genoese tower.... Gradually, a sea mist got up. Soon, nothing could be seen except a white ridge of sea-fog around the island. Suddenly, a great flood of light emerged above my head from the lighthouse. The clear ray left the island in complete darkness as it fell far out to sea, and I, too, was lost to sight in the night, under the great luminous sweeps which barely caught me as they pa.s.sed.... But the wind was freshening again. Time to go indoors. I groped to close the huge door, I secured the iron bars, and then, still feeling my way, took the small cast-iron stairs, which trembled and rang under my feet, to the top of the lighthouse. Here, as you can imagine, there was plenty of light.

Picture a gigantic lamp with six rows of wicks with the inner facets of the lantern arranged around them, some with an enormous crystal gla.s.s lens, others opened onto a large fixed gla.s.s panel which protected the flame from the wind.... When I came in, I was completely dazzled, and the coppers, tins, white metal reflectors, rotating walls of convex crystal gla.s.s, with large blue-tinged circles, and all the flickering lights, gave me a touch of vertigo.

However, gradually my eyes got used to it, and I settled down at the foot of the lamp, beside the keeper who was reading his Plutarch--for fear of falling asleep....

Outside, all was dark and desperate. On the small turning balcony, a maddening gust of wind howled. The lighthouse creaked; the sea roared.

Out on the point, the breakers on the shoals sounded like cannon shots.... At times, an invisible finger tapped at the panes; it was some bird of the night, drawn by the light, braining itself against the gla.s.s....

Inside the sparkling, hot lantern, nothing was heard except the crackling flame, the dripping oil, the chain unwinding and the monotonous intoning of the life of Demetrius of Phaleron....

At midnight, the keeper stood up, took a last peek at the wicks and we went below. We pa.s.sed the keeper of the second watch, rubbing his eyes as he came up. We gave him the flask and the Petrarch. Then, before retiring, we briefly entered the locker-room below, which was full of chains, heavy weights, metal tanks, and rope. By the light of his small lamp, the keeper wrote in the large lighthouse log, always left open at the last entry:

_Midnight. Heavy seas. Tempest. s.h.i.+p at sea_.

THE WRECK OF THE _SEMILLANTE_

The other night the mistral took us off course to the Corsican coast, so to speak. Let's stay there, as it were, while I tell you of an horrific event, often talked about by the local fishermen during their evening get-togethers, the details of which came to me by chance.

About two or three years ago, I was out sailing on the Sardinian Sea with seven or eight customs' men. A tough trip for a landlubber! There hadn't been a single fair day in the whole of March. The wind relentlessly pursued us and the sea never, ever, let up.

One evening, as we were running before the storm, our boat found refuge in the opening to the Straits of Bonifacio, in the midst of an archipelago.... They were not a welcoming sight: huge bare rocks covered with birds, a few clumps of absinth, some lenticular scrub, and here and there pieces of rotting wood half buried in the silt. But, believe me, for a night's stay, these ominous rocks were a much better prospect than the half-covered deckhouse of our old boat, where the waves made themselves very much at home. In fact, we were pleased to see the islands.

The crew had lit a fire for the bouillabaisse, by the time we were all ash.o.r.e. The Master hailed me and pointed out a small outcrop of white masonry almost lost in the fog at the far end of the island:

--Are you coming to the cemetery? he said.

--A cemetery, Master Lionetti! Where are we then?

--The Lavezzi Islands, monsieur. The six hundred souls from the _Semillante_ are buried here, at the very spot where their frigate foundered ten years ago.... Poor souls, they don't get many visitors; the least we can do is to go and say h.e.l.lo to them, while we're here....

--Of course, willingly, skipper.

The _Semillante's_ crew's last resting place was inexpressibly gloomy.

I can still see its small low wall, it's iron gate, rusted and hard to open, its silent chapel, and hundreds of crosses overgrown by the gra.s.s. Not a single everlasting wreath, not one remembrance, nothing!

Oh, the poor deserted dead; how cold they must be in their unwanted graves.

We stayed there briefly, kneeling down. The Master was praying loudly, while gulls, sole guardians of the cemetery, circled over our heads, their harsh melancholy cries counterpoint to the sea's lamentations.

The prayer finished, we plodded, sadly, back to the spot where the boat was moored. The sailors had not wasted any time; we were met by a great roaring fire in the shelter of a rock, with a hot-pot steaming. We all sat around, feet drying by the flames, and soon everyone had two slices of rye bread to dunk into a soup-filled terra cotta bowl on our knees.

The meal was eaten in silence; after all, we were wet, and hungry, and near to the cemetery.... However, once the bowls were empty, we lit our pipes and started to speak about the _Semillante_.

--Well, how did it happen? I asked the boat's Captain, who was looking thoughtfully into the flames, head in hands.

--How did it happen? Captain Lionetti repeated by way of a reply. Then he sighed,--Alas, monsieur, n.o.body alive can tell you. All we know is that the _Semillante_, loaded with troops bound for the Crimea, had left Toulon in bad weather the previous night. Later, things changed for the worse; wind, rain, and enormous seas the like of which had never been seen before.... In the morning, the wind moderated, but the sea was still in a frenzy. On top of that, the devil's own fog descended--you couldn't see a light at four paces. Those fogs, monsieur, you can't believe how treacherous they can be.... But it didn't make any difference, I believe the _Semillante_ must have lost her rudder that morning, for there is no such thing as a risk-free fog, and the Captain should never have gone aground there. He was a tough and experienced seafarer, as we all know. He had commanded the naval station in Corsica for three years, and knew his coast hereabouts as well as I; and it's all I do know.

--At what time do you think the _Semillante_ foundered?

--It must have been at midday; yes, monsieur, right in the middle of the day. But, my word, when it comes to sea fogs, midday is no better than a pitch-black night.... A local customs' officer told me, that at about half past eleven that day, as he went outside to close his shutters, the wind got up again and a gust blew his cap off. At the risk of being carried away himself, he began to scramble after it along the sh.o.r.e--on his hands and knees. You must understand that customs'

men are not well off, and a cap is an expensive item. It seems that our man raised his head for a second and noticed a big s.h.i.+p under bare poles, running before the wind blowing towards the Lavezzi Islands.

This s.h.i.+p was coming fast, so fast that he hardly had time to get a good look at her. No doubt it was the _Semillante_ because half an hour later, the island shepherd heard something on these rocks.... But here's the very shepherd I'm talking about, monsieur; he will tell you himself.... Good day, Palombo, don't be frightened, come and warm yourself.

A hooded man, whom I had seen a moment ago hanging around our fire, came timidly towards us. I had thought he was one of the crew, not knowing that there was a shepherd on the island.

He was an old, leprous person, not quite all there, and affected by some awful disease or other which gave him obscenely thickened lips, horrible to look at. We took great trouble to tell him what it was all about. Then, scratching his diseased lip, the old man told us that, yes indeed, from inside his hut he had heard a fearful crash on the rocks at midday on that day. The island was completely flooded, so he couldn't go out-of-doors and it wasn't until the next day that he opened up to see the sh.o.r.e covered in debris and bodies washed up by the sea. Horrified, he ran to his boat to try to get some help from Bonifacio.

The shepherd was tired by all this talking, and sat down, and the Master took up the story:

--Yes, monsieur, this was the unfortunate old man that came to raise the alarm. He was almost insane with fear, and from that day on, his mind has been deranged. The truth is, the catastrophe was enough to do it.... Imagine six hundred bodies piled up haphazardly on the beach with splinters of wood and shreds of sail-cloth.... Poor _Semillante_.... The sea had crushed everything to such tiny fragments, that the shepherd, Palombo, couldn't find enough good timber to make a fence round his hut.... As for the men, practically all of them were disfigured and hideously mutilated.... it was pitiful to see them all tangled up together. We found the captain in full dress uniform, and the chaplain with his stole round his neck. In one place, between two rocks, lay the s.h.i.+p's young apprentice, open-eyed.... He looked as though he was still alive--but he wasn't. It was fated; no one could have survived.

Here the Master broke off his tale:

--Hey, Nardi, he cried, the fire's going out.

Nardi threw two or three pieces of tarred planking onto the embers which spluttered and then blazed. Lionetti continued,

--The saddest thing about this story is this.... Three weeks before the disaster, a small corvette, similar to the _Semillante_, on its way to the Crimea was also wrecked in the same way, almost at the same place.

This time however, we managed to save the crew and twenty soldiers in transit who were on board.... These unfortunate soldiers, you see, were not able to go about their business. We took them to Bonifacio and they stayed with us at the port for two days.... Once they were thoroughly dried out and back on their feet, we bade them farewell and good luck, and they returned to Toulon, where they later set sail once again for the Crimea.... It's not too difficult to guess which s.h.i.+p they sailed on! Yes, monsieur, it was the _Semillante_.... We found all twenty of them amongst the dead, just where we are now.... I, myself, recovered a good looking Brigadier with fine whiskers, a fresh-faced man from Paris, whom I had put up at my house and who had made us laugh continuously with his tales.... To see him there was heart breaking.

Oh, Holy Mother of G.o.d!...

With that, Lionetti, deeply moved, knocked out his pipe and tottered off to his cabin wis.h.i.+ng me goodnight.... The sailors spoke quietly to each other for a while, then they put out their pipes one by one.

Nothing more was said. The old shepherd went off, and I remained alone, to mull things over, sitting amongst the sleeping crew.