In a hoarse voice he said, “We’ll help you, mec. I don’t want you to stay around here and become like me.”
“Thank you.”
“My name is Jean sans Peur. I was handsomer, healthier and stronger than you when I first came to the bagne. Look at what ten years have done to me.”
“Doesn’t anybody take care of you?”
“Sure. I’m much better since I started giving myself injections of chauhnoogra oil. Look.” He turned his head and showed me his left side. “It’s drying up there.”
Feeling an immense pity for this man, I made a motion to touch his cheek as a sign of friendship. He threw himself back and said, “Thank you for wanting to touch me, but you must never touch a leper, nor eat or drink from his bowl.” Of all the lepers, his is the face I remember, this man who had the courage to make me look.
“Where’s the mec?” In the doorway I saw the shadow of a very small man not much bigger than a dwarf. “Toussaint and the others want to see him. Bring him to the center.”
Jean sans Peur got up and said, “Follow me.” We all set off into the night, four or five in front, me next to Jean sans Peur, more behind. After three minutes we arrived at a clearing faintly lit by the moon. It was the flat summit of the island. In the middle was a house. Light came from two windows. In front about twenty men waited for us. As we arrived at the door, they stood back to let us through. I found myself in a room thirty feet long and twelve feet wide with a kind of fireplace in which wood was burning, surrounded by four huge stones of the same height. The room was lighted by two large hurricane lanterns. On one of the stone stools sat an ageless man with black eyes set in a white face. Behind him on a bench were five or six others.
“I’m Toussaint, the Corsican; you must be Papillon.”
“I am.”
“News travels fast in the bagne. Almost as fast as you do. Where is your carbine?”
“We threw it in the river.”
“Where?”
“Opposite the hospital wall, exactly where we jumped.”
“So it would be possible to recover it?”
“I suppose so. The water isn’t very deep there.”
“How do you know?”
“We had to wade through it to carry my injured friend to the boat.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He broke his leg.”
“What have you done for him?”
“I split some branches and made him splints.”
“Is he in pain?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“In the boat.”
“You said you came for help. What kind of help?”
“A better boat.”
“You want us to give you a boat?”
“Yes. I have money to buy it with.”
“Good. I’ll sell you mine; it’s a great boat and brand-new. I stole it last week in Albina. It’s not a boat; it’s a transatlantic steamer. There’s only one thing missing: a keel. But in two hours we can fix it up with a good one. It has everything else you could want: a rudder, a thirteen-foot mast of ironwood and a brand-new heavy linen sail. What will you give me for it?”
“Tell me what you want. I don’t know what things are worth here.”
“Three thousand francs if you have it. If you don’t, go find the carbine tomorrow night and I’ll give you the boat in exchange.”
“No, I’d rather pay.”
“O.K. It’s a sale. La Puce, let’s have some coffee!”
La Puce, the near-dwarf who had first come for me, went over to a board fixed to the wall above the fire, took down a bowl, shining new and clean, poured in some coffee from a bottle and put it on the fire. After a moment he took the bowl and poured the coffee in some mugs. Toussaint leaned down and passed the mugs to the men behind him. La Puce handed me the bowl, saying, “Don’t worry. This bowl is only for visitors. No lepers drink from it.”
I took the bowl and drank, then rested it on my knee. It was then that I noticed a finger stuck to the bowl. I was just taking this in when La Puce said:
“Damn, I’ve lost another finger. Where the devil is it?”
“It’s there,” I said, showing him the bowl.
He pulled it off, threw it in the fire and said, “You can go on drinking. I have dry leprosy. I’m disintegrating piece by piece, but I’m not rotting. I’m not contagious.” The smell of grilled meat reached me. It must be his finger.
Toussaint said, “You’ll have to stay through the day until low tide. Go tell your friends. Bring the man with the broken leg into one of the huts. Take everything you have from the boat and sink it. Nobody here can help you. You understand why.”
I returned to my companions and we carried Clousiot to the hut. One hour later everything was out of the boat and carefully stowed away. La Puce asked if we’d make him a present of it and also a paddle. I gave it to him and he took it away to sink it in a special place he knew. The night went fast. All three of us were in the hut, lying on new blankets sent over by Toussaint. They were delivered in the heavy paper they’d been shipped in. As we lay there, I brought Clousiot and Maturette up to date on what had happened since our arrival on the island, and the bargain I had struck with Toussaint. Clousiot said without thinking, “Then this cavale is really costing six thousand francs. I’ll pay half, Papillon, or the three thousand I have.”
“We’re not here to haggle like a bunch of Armenians. As long as I have money, I’ll pay. After that we’ll see.”
During the night we were left to ourselves. When day broke, Toussaint was there. “Good morning. Don’t be afraid to come out. Nobody can bother you here. There’s a man watching for police boats on the river from a cocoa tree on top of the island. We haven’t seen any so far. As long as the white rag is up, there’s nothing in sight. If he sees anything, he’ll come down and tell us. Pick yourselves some papayas if you like.”
I said, “Toussaint, what about the keel?”
“We’re going to make it from the infirmary door. It’s made of heavy snakewood. The keel will need two planks. We brought the boat up while it was dark. Come see it.”
We went. It was a magnificent boat sixteen feet long, brand-new, with two benches, one with a hole for the mast. It was heavy, and Maturette and I had trouble turning it over. The sail and the ropes were also new. There were rings on the sides for hanging a barrel of water. We went to work. By noon a keel, tapered from front to back, was solidly in place with long screws and four angle irons.
The lepers formed a circle around us, watching in silence. Toussaint told us what to do and we obeyed. There wasn’t a sign of a sore on Toussainte face; he looked perfectly normal, but when he talked you noticed that only one side of his face moved, the left side. He told me that he, too, had dry leprosy. His torso and right arm were paralyzed and he expected his right leg to go before long. His right eye was fixed, like a glass eye; he could see with it, but he couldn’t move it.
I only hoped that no one who ever loved these lepers knew their terrible fate.
As I worked, I talked to Toussaint. No one else spoke. Just once, when I was about to pick up one of the angle irons, one of them said: “Don’t touch them yet. I cut myself when I was removing one of them from a piece of furniture, and there’s still blood on it even though I tried to wipe it off.” One of the lepers poured rum on it and set it on fire, then repeated the operation. “Now you can use it,” the man said. While we were working, Toussaint said to one of the men, “You’ve left the island several times. Papillon and his friends haven’t, so tell them how to do it.”
“Low tide is early tonight. The tide will start to ebb at three o’clock. When night falls, around six, you’ll have a very strong current which in three hours will take you about sixty miles toward the mouth of the river. At nine o’clock you must stop. Get a good grip on an overhanging tree and wait out the six hours of the rising tide—that is, until three in the morning. But don’t leave then; the current isn’t movin
g fast enough yet. At four-thirty beat it into the middle of the river. You have an hour and a half before daybreak to do your thirty miles. This is your last chance. When the sun rises at six, you make for the sea. Even if the guards spot you, they won’t be able to catch you because they’ll be arriving at the bar just as the tide turns. They won’t be able to get over it and you’ll have made it. Your life depends on this half-mile headstart. This boat has only one sail. What did you have on your boat?”
“A mainsail and a jib.”
“This is a heavy boat; it can take two more sails—a spinnaker from the bow to the mast, and a jib that will help keep the nose pointing into the wind. Use all your sails and go straight into the waves; the sea is always heavy at the mouth of the estuary. Get your friends to lie flat in the bottom of the boat to stabilize it, and you hold the tiller tight in your hand. Don’t tie the sheet to your leg, but put it through the ring and hold it with a single turn around your wrist. If you see that the force of the wind plus the size of the waves is about to capsize you, let everything go—the boat will immediately find its own equilibrium. Don’t stop; let the mainsail luff and keep going with your spinnaker and the jib. When the sea calms down, you’ll have time to take down your sail, bring it in and move on after hoisting it again. Do you know the route?”
“No. All I know is that Venezuela and Colombia are north-west.”
“Right. But be careful you’re not driven back to the coast. Dutch Guiana, opposite us, turns in all escaped cons; so does British Guiana. Trinidad doesn’t turn them in, but you can only stay two weeks. Venezuela will turn you in after making you work on a road gang for a year or two.”
I listened closely. He told me that he left the island from time to time, but since he was a leper, he was always sent back in short order. He admitted that he had never been farther than Georgetown in British Guiana. He wasn’t an obvious leper, having lost only his toes, as I could see since he was barefoot. Toussaint made me repeat my instructions and I did so without making a mistake.
At that point Jean sans Peur said, “How much time should he spend on the open sea?”
I answered straight off, “I’ll do three days north northeast. With the drift, that makes due north. On the fourth day I’ll head northwest, which comes out to due west.”
“Bravo,” said the leper. “The last time I did it, I spent only two days going northeast and I hit British Guiana. If you take three days going north, you’ll pass north of Trinidad or Barbados, you’ll bypass Venezuela, and before you know it you’ll find yourself in Colombia or Curaçao.”
Jean sans Peur asked, “Toussaint, how much did you sell your boat for?”
“Three thousand. Is that too much?”
“No, that isn’t why I asked. I just wanted to know. Have you got the money, Papillon?”
“Yes.”
“Will you have any left?”
“No, it’s all we have, exactly three thousand francs belonging to my friend, Clousiot.”
“Toussaint, will you buy my revolver?” said Jean sans Peur. “I’d like to help these mecs. How much will you give me for it?”
“A thousand francs,” Toussaint said. “I’d like to help them too.”
“Thanks for everything,” Maturette said, looking at Jean sans Peur.
“Thanks,” said Clousiot.
I began to feel ashamed of my lie, so I said, “No, I can’t accept it. There’s no reason for it.”
Jean looked at me and said, “Sure there’s a reason. Three thousand francs is a lot of money, but even at that price Toussaint is losing at least two thousand, for that’s a great boat he’s giving you. So there’s no reason why I can’t give you something too.”
Then a very moving thing happened. La Chouette placed a hat on the ground and all the lepers came and threw in bills and silver. They came from everywhere and every last one put in something. Now I was really ashamed. How could I tell them that I still had some money? God, what a fix! It was despicable to let this go on in the face of such generosity. Then a mutilated black from Timbuktu—his hands were stumps, he hadn’t a single finger—said to us, “Money doesn’t help us live. Don’t be ashamed to accept it. All we use it for is gambling or screwing the girl lepers who come here sometimes from Albina.” This relieved my guilt and I never did admit I still had money.
The lepers supplied us with two hundred hard-boiled eggs in a crate marked with a red cross. It was the same crate that had arrived that morning with the day’s medicine. They also brought two live turtles weighing at least sixty pounds each, some leaf tobacco, two bottles of matches and a striking pad, a sack of rice weighing at least a hundred pounds, two bags of charcoal, a primus stove taken from the infirmary and a demijohn of fuel. Everybody in this miserable community was touched by our predicament and wanted to help. It was almost as if our cavale were theirs. The boat was pulled to where we had made our original landing. They counted the money in the hat: eight hundred and ten francs. I owed Toussaint only twelve hundred. Clousiot handed me his plan and I opened it before everybody. It contained a thousand-franc bill and four bills of five hundred each. I gave Toussaint fifteen hundred francs and he gave me back three hundred, saying:
“Here, take the revolver. It’s a present. This is your only chance; you don’t want to fail at the last moment for lack of a weapon. But I hope you won’t have to use it.”
I didn’t know how to thank them, him first, then all the others. The orderly prepared a small box with cotton, alcohol, aspirin, bandages, iodine, a pair of scissors and some adhesive tape. A leper produced two small, carefully planed planks and two Ace bandages still in their original wrappings so that we could replace Clousiot’s splints.
Toward five o’clock it began to rain. Jean sans Peur said, “You’re in luck. This will keep them from seeing you. You can leave now and it will give you a good half hour’s headstart. You’ll be that much nearer the mouth of the river by four-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“How will I know the time?”
“You’ll know by the tide, by whether it’s rising or falling.” The boat was put in the water. It was a far cry from our old one. This boat floated more than sixteen inches above the water line, fully loaded, us included. The mast was rolled up in the sail in the bottom of the boat since we weren’t to use it until we were out of the river. We put the rudder and tiller in place and found a grass cushion for me to sit on. With the blankets, we fixed up a corner for Clousiot in the bottom of the boat, between me and the water barrel. Maturette sat on the bottom in the bow. Right away I had a feeling of security I had never had in the other one.
It was still raining, and I was to go down the middle of the river but a little to the left, toward the Dutch side. Jean sans Peur said, “Good-by. And get moving!”
“Good luck!” said Toussaint, and gave the boat a strong shove with his foot.
“Thanks, Toussaint, thanks, Jean, everybody, thanks a million!” We were off and away fast, for the ebb tide had started two and a half hours before and was now moving with incredible speed.
It continued to rain and we couldn’t see thirty feet in front of us. There were two small islands lower down, and Maturette was leaning over the bow, his eyes straining for any sign of rocks. Night came. A large tree was going down the river with us—happily at a slower pace. For a moment we were entangled in its branches, but we freed ourselves quickly and resumed our lightning speed. We smoked, we drank some rum. The lepers had given us six straw-covered Chianti bottles filled with it. It was odd, but not one of us mentioned the lepers’ terrible deformities. We talked only of their kindness, their generosity and honesty, and our luck in meeting the Masked Breton. It was raining harder and harder. I was soaked to the bone, but our woolen sweaters were so good that, even soaking wet, they kept us warm. Only my hand on the tiller was stiff with cold.
“We’re going more than twenty-five miles an hour now,” Maturette said. “How long do you think we’ve been gone?”
“I’ll tell you in
a minute,” Clousiot said. “Wait—three hours and fifteen minutes.”
“You’re joking. How do you know?”
“I’ve been counting in groups of three hundred seconds since we left. At the end of each one I cut a piece of cardboard. I have thirty-nine pieces. Since each one represents five minutes, that means three hours and a quarter since we started. And unless I’m wrong, in the next fifteen or twenty minutes we won’t be going down any more; we’ll be going back up where we came from.”
I pushed the tiller to the right in order to cut across the river and get closer to the Dutch coast. The current stopped just as we were about to crash into the brush. We didn’t move, either up or down. It was still raining. We stopped smoking, we stopped talking. I whispered, “Take a paddle and pull.” I paddled, holding the tiller under my right thigh. We grazed the brush, pulled on the branches and hid underneath. It was completely dark inside the vegetation. The river was gray and covered with a heavy mist. Without the evidence of the tide’s ebb and flow, it would be impossible to tell where the river ended and the sea began.
THE GREAT DEPARTURE
The rising tide was to last six hours. Then we were to wait an hour and a half after the turn of the tide. That meant I had seven hours to sleep, if only I could calm down. I had to sleep now, for when would I have time at sea? I stretched out between the barrel and the mast, Maturette used a blanket to make a tent between the barrel and the bench, and thus well protected, I slept and I slept. Nothing disturbed me, not dreams, rain, or my uncomfortable position. I slept, I slept—until Maturette woke me and said:
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