The wind seemed to be rising. Or, at least, it seemed heavier—if you can call a wind heavy. The waves were stronger and deeper and the whitecaps bigger than at the beginning of the night.
I’d been at sea thirty hours. I had to admit that, for the moment at least, things looked better rather than worse. But the day that was about to begin would be the real test.
Yesterday I’d been exposed to the sun from six in the morning until six at night. When the sun came up today and started cooking me again, it wasn’t going to be any fun. It was still night, but my lips were already burning, as were my eyes, arms and hands. If I could manage it, I wouldn’t expose my arms. That would depend on whether I could stand to wear my sweater. I was also raw between my buttocks from the salt water and the constant rubbing against the sacks.
In any event, old pal, burned or not, you’re on cavale and it’s worth a few discomforts. The prognosis on your arriving on Grande Terre alive is 90 percent favorable and that’s something, isn’t it? Even if you arrive literally scalped, with half your body raw flesh, it will be a small price to pay. And you haven’t seen a single shark. Are they all on vacation? This time luck is really with you, and if you don’t admit it, you’re a damn peculiar fellow. This time it’s going to work. All the other cavales were too carefully thought out, too well prepared; when all is said and done, the successful cavale will have been the stupidest: two sacks of coconuts and let the wind and sea take you! To Grande Terre. You don’t have to be a graduate of Saint-Cyr to know that all wrecks end up on shore.
If the wind and waves could keep this up all day, I would almost certainly reach land by afternoon.
The monster of the tropics was looming up behind me. Today he seemed determined to burn everything to a crisp. He had the lunar day on the run in no time, not even waiting to get out of bed to proclaim himself master, the undisputed King of the Tropics. In no time at all the wind had gone from cool to warm. In another hour it would be hot. A marvelous sensation of well-being crept through my body. The first rays of the sun had no sooner touched my skin than I felt a gentle warmth suffuse me from my waist to my scalp. I removed the towel from around my head and exposed my cheeks to the sun as if to a log fire. Before the monster burned me to the quick, he was letting me know he was Life. Soon he would be Death.
The blood flowed through my veins and even my aching rear began to revive with the renewed circulation.
I could see the bush clearly, or at least I could see the tops of the trees. They seemed fairly near. I’d wait for the sun to rise a little higher before I stood up on my sacks to look for Sylvain.
In less than an hour the sun was high. Christ, it was going to be hot! My left eye was almost glued shut. I scooped up some water and wet it; it stung. I took off my sweater; I wanted my chest bare for a few moments before the sun got too hot.
An unusually strong wave lifted me high. In the split second before it broke and I started down, I caught sight of Sylvain. He was sitting bare-chested on his raft. He didn’t see me. He was less than two hundred yards away, a little ahead on my left. The wind was still strong, so I decided to try to catch up with him by taking off my sweater, keeping only my arms in the sleeves and holding it up in the air like a sail with the bottom in my mouth.
I kept this up for almost half an hour until my teeth began to hurt and I became exhausted trying to resist the wind. But it did look as if I’d narrowed the distance between us.
Hallelujah! I just saw him again, less than a hundred yards away. But what was he doing? He didn’t seem to care where I was. Another wave came, lifting me up, and I saw him once, twice, three times. I distinctly made out that he had his hand over his eyes as if he were looking around. Look back, you bastard! He looked toward me but didn’t seem to see anything.
I stood up and whistled. When the raft climbed out of the trough, I saw Sylvain standing facing me. He raised his sweater in the air. We waved hello at least twenty times before we sat down again. Each time a wave peaked, we hailed each other, for luckily we were rising and falling to the same rhythm. On the last two waves he held his arm out toward the bush, which was now very distinct. It couldn’t be more than six or seven miles away. I lost my balance and fell in a sitting position on the raft. I was so overcome with joy to see my buddy and the bush so near that I wept like a child. The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of every color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature’s monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it’s here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: “You suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you.”
I never had any religious instruction, I didn’t know the ABC’s of the Christian religion, I was so stupid I didn’t know who Jesus’ father was or whether His mother was really the Virgin Mary, or whether His father was a carpenter or a camel driver; yet being ignorant of all that didn’t keep me from finding God when I really needed Him, in the wind, the sea, the sun, the bush, the stars, in the very fish He had placed in the sea to nourish man.
The sun had risen fast. It must be ten o’clock. I was bone-dry from my waist up, so I soaked my towel and wrapped it—burnoose style—around my head. Then I put my sweater on to cover my burning shoulders, back and arms. Even though my legs were constantly doused with water, they, too, were as red as lobsters.
Because the shore was nearer now, the waves were moving faster, racing toward it in long, straight lines. I could now see the bush in detail, and it made me realize how quickly we had narrowed the distance. I had learned how to figure distances on my first cavale: when details are sharp, you’re less than three miles away. I could see the difference between the thicknesses of the various trees, and from the crest of an especially high wave I made out a giant one that had fallen, its branches awash in the sea.
Suddenly dolphins and birds! Just so long as the dolphins didn’t play any games with the raft. I had heard they were in the habit of pushing driftwood and men toward shore, but the men often drowned from their well-intentioned prodding. No, they spun around me a few times, three or four of them come to have a look and see what was up, but they left without even grazing the raft.
It was noon, the sun directly overhead. Plainly it intended to poach me in sea water. My eyes oozed pus and the skin was gone from my nose and lips. The waves were shorter now and rushed toward shore with a deafening roar.
Since the waves were so much smaller, I could see Sylvain most of the time. Once in a while he turned toward me and raised his arm. He was still naked from the waist up, the towel around his head.
Then the waves turned into rollers. There was a sand bar which they hit with a terrible roar, and then, once past it, they advanced on the bush in an explosion of spray. The sea was an ugly yellow covered with muddy foam. We were so close I could see the dirty line it left on the tree trunks at high tide.
Even the noise of the breakers couldn’t deaden the shrieks of thousands of wading birds. Two or three yards more, then ploof! I had run aground; I was stuck in the quicksand. There wasn’t enough water to carry me farther. From the position of the sun it looked to be about two o’clock, or forty hours since I’d set out. That was the day before yesterday, at ten in the evening, after two hours of ebb tide. The tide would turn in about three hours and, by night, I’d be in the bush. I must keep the chain attached to avoid being swept off the raft when the breakers started to roll over me. It would take two or three hours of rising tide before I’d have draft enough to float.
Sylvain was about a hundred
yards ahead on my right, making motions in my direction. It looked as if he were trying to tell me something, but he couldn’t have made any sound or I would have heard it. With the breakers behind us, the only noise was the cries of the birds. I was about five hundred yards from the bush and Sylvain was still a hundred yards or so ahead of me. But what was the stupid ox doing? He was standing up and leaving his raft. Had he lost his mind? If he started walking, with each step he’d sink a little deeper until he wouldn’t be able to get back to his raft. I tried to whistle but couldn’t. There was a little water left in the gourd; I drank it, then tried to call to him to stop. I couldn’t get a sound out. Bubbles of gas were rising from the quicksand, which meant it was shallow and there was mud underneath. The poor bugger who got stuck in it was done for, for sure.
Sylvain turned toward me, making signs I didn’t understand. I flung my arms about in an attempt to tell him, “No, no, don’t leave your raft, you’ll never reach the bush!” Since he was between me and his raft, I couldn’t tell how far he was from it. At first I thought he must be fairly near, that if he started to sink he could still grab hold.
Suddenly I realized he was too far away, that he was being sucked in and was unable to free himself. The sound of a wail reached me. I lay down flat on my sacks, dug my hands into the quicksand and pulled with all my might. The raft started to move and I crept forward perhaps twenty yards. I was now where, from a standing position, I could see that Sylvain, my pal, was at least ten yards from his raft and buried up to his waist. Terror gave me back my voice and I yelled, “Sylvain! Sylvain! Don’t move! Lie flat on the quicksand! Try to free your legs!” He heard and his head bobbed up and down as if to agree. I lay down on my stomach again and clawed at the sand. Rage gave me superhuman strength, and I moved another thirty yards. All this must have taken an hour, but I was getting very close to him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. I had trouble seeing him, though, because my hands, arms and face were covered with mud. I tried to wipe away the salty muck that stung my left eye and prevented me from seeing; the right eye was weeping. Finally I managed to see him. He wasn’t lying flat, he was standing up, and only his upper torso still showed above the quicksand.
The first breaker passed over me, leaving my raft exactly where it was, and subsided ahead, covering the quicksand with foam. It swept over Sylvain; now only his chest was above the level of the sand. I realized that the more the breakers rolled in, the softer the sand would become. I had to reach him.
With the desperate energy of a mother trying to save her baby from danger, I pulled and pulled and pulled against the sand to reach Sylvain. He looked at me without speaking, without moving, his eyes wide open and glued to mine. I wanted only not to lose those staring eyes. Not looking to see where my hands were going, I dragged forward a little, but two more breakers rolled over me, and when they had passed, the sand was so much softer it was hard to keep moving. A huge wave hit me, knocking the breath out of me and almost sweeping me off the raft. I sat up. Sylvain was up to his armpits. I was less than forty yards away now and Sylvain was still staring at me. I saw that he knew he was dying there in the muck, three hundred yards from the promised land.
I lay down again and went back to clawing at the sand, which was almost liquid now. Our eyes stayed riveted on each other. He made a sign as if to say, “No, give up, you can’t make it.” But I kept on until I was about thirty yards away, when another giant breaker covered me with an avalanche of water and I floated another five or six yards forward.
When the breaker had passed on, I looked up. Sylvain was gone. The quicksand was covered with a thin layer of foamy water. There was not even a hand raised in a final farewell. Suddenly I was seized with a shameful animal reaction: the instinct for survival swept all sentiment away. I said to myself, You may still be alive. But when you’re in the bush alone, without a friend, your cavale will be in trouble.
A roller broke over my back—I was sitting now—and brought me back to reality. The wave was so powerful that it doubled me over and for several minutes I couldn’t get my breath. The raft slid forward another few yards, and it was only then, when I saw the wave die beneath the trees, that I wept for my friend: We were so near. If only you hadn’t gotten off! Less than three hundred yards! Why? Why did you do it? What on God’s earth made you think you could walk to shore? Too much sun? The blinding reflections? Did you lose the strength to endure this hell? Why couldn’t a man like you take the punishment for a few more hours?
The breakers kept on rolling in with a thunderous roar. They were bigger still and coming closer and closer together. Each time I was drenched completely, but each time I slid a few yards forward. Once the wave moved on, I was grounded, but I was determined not to budge from my raft until I had a branch or liana in my hand. Twenty yards to go. It must have been another hour before the last wave literally hurled me into the trees. I unscrewed the bolt and freed myself from the chain. But I held on to it. I might need it again.
IN THE BUSH
Quickly, before the sun went down, I crept into the bush, half swimming, half walking, for there was quicksand everywhere. The water penetrated so deeply into the bush that, as night fell, I was still far from dry land. The odor of rot assaulted my nose and the gas was so strong it stung my eyes. My legs were covered with grass and leaves. Each time I took a step, I first felt the ground under the water. I moved forward only when I met resistance.
My first night was spent on the trunk of a fallen tree. I hung my sack high on a branch and closed it tight. That sack was my life—without the coconuts it contained, I’d never survive. I strapped my machete to my right wrist. Then, exhausted, my body burned and itching, I stretched out in a crook of the tree and fell asleep without a thought in my head. Perhaps I murmured “Poor Sylvain!” a couple of times, but I can’t be sure.
The sound of the birds woke me up. The sun was filtering into the bush at such an angle that it must have been seven or eight in the morning. There was water everywhere—the tide was rising. It was probably the end of the tenth tide, or roughly sixty hours since I’d left Diable. I couldn’t tell how far I was from the sea. In any event, I had to wait for the water to subside before I ventured into the sun. I was out of drinking water. I ate my last three handfuls of coconut pulp and rubbed some of it over my burns and bruises. The oil in the pulp was soothing. Then I smoked two cigarettes and thought about Sylvain, this time without the earlier selfishness. After all, hadn’t I planned originally to escape alone? So … nothing was really changed, except for the great sadness in my heart. I tried to close my eyes against the memory of his sinking—as if that could help. For him it was all over.
My sack had survived nicely in its nook and I took out a coconut. Sitting with my legs spread out, I brought it down against the tree with all my might until I finally managed to crack the shell. You can do it with a machete, but it’s better just to bang it on the point. I ate a whole fresh coconut and drank the sweet liquid inside. The sea was retreating fast now; I could walk on the mud to reach the beach.
The sun was at its most radiant and I’d never seen the sea so beautiful. I looked long and hard at the spot where I figured Sylvain had disappeared. I washed in sea water and the sun soon dried both me and my clothes. After a cigarette and a last look at my friend’s grave, I started into the bush. The walking was quite easy. My sack slung over my shoulder, I moved slowly through the thick vegetation until after two hours I finally reached permanently dry ground. No tidemarks at the base of the trees. I decided to camp here and rest for twenty-four hours. I would open the coconuts one by one, take out the nuts and put them in my sack, ready to eat whenever I was hungry. I could light a fire, but that probably wasn’t too good an idea.
The rest of the day and the night was uneventful. When the birds woke me up with the sun, I finished extracting the coconut pulp and, with my much reduced sack on my shoulder, headed west.
Toward three in the afternoon I came upon a path. It must have been for either ba
lata prospectors or prospectors after hardwoods, or maybe for bringing supplies to gold panners. The path was narrow but well cleared—apparently it was used often. Every so often I came across the hoofprints of a donkey or an unshod mule and sometimes the prints of human feet, the big toe clearly outlined in the dried mud. I walked until nightfall. Occasionally I’d chew some coconut, which was both nourishing and thirst-quenching, and then I’d use a mixture of oil and saliva to coat my nose, lips and cheeks. My eyes, full of pus, often stuck together. As soon as I got the chance, I’d rinse them out with fresh water. Along with the coconuts in my sack, I had a waterproof box containing a piece of Marseilles soap, a Gillette razor, twelve blades and a shaving brush.
I walked with my machete in hand although the path was so clear I didn’t need it. On either side of me I noticed what seemed to be freshly cut branches. There must be a lot of activity on this path. I’d better be careful.
The bush here was different from the bush I’d known during my first cavale from Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. This one had two levels and was not as thick. The first level rose to a height of fifteen to twenty feet; above that was the green vault at a height of over sixty feet. Daylight reached only the right-hand side of the path; the left was in almost total darkness.
I was walking fast now, sometimes coming to a clearing—whether made by man or by lightning, I couldn’t tell. The slant of the sun’s rays indicated that it was near dusk. I turned my back to the sun and headed east toward the blacks’ village of Kourou, where the penitentiary of the same name was located.
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