Читать книгу Condemned to Devil's Island - Mary Blair Rice - Страница 5

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In the morning the port-holes were to the strong. If a man of frail force found a place, it was by grace of a powerful patron. For at the ports only two faces might be pressed against the dingy glass; thus only twelve men might look upon the land with which all were so vitally concerned. In the mind of French convicts Guiana has long stood next to the ultimate horror. And now through eight-inch port-holes it might at last actually be seen....

“What is it like?”

“Tell us what it is like.”

Behind the faces flattened against glass, men crowded, questioning.

“What do you see?”

“Only trees. Nothing is different from what we saw last night.”

“Trees and more canoes full of black men.”

“Ma foi! How wide they open their mouths when they laugh!”

“Oh, là! là! but they have white teeth!”

“Now here comes a launch.”

“Frenchmen on board.”

“No, blacks in white men’s clothes.”

“The pilot, perhaps.”

The twos at the port-holes gave their places to other twos. They reported that men from the launch were climbing up the ship’s ladder; then, that the launch had gone away.

“Yes, it must have brought the pilot.”

Somehow the morning passed. Nothing more was to be seen from the ports. Even the canoes had disappeared. All now had a turn at the windows. But there was only the amber water which the Maroni pours into the sea, and a little distance off, a bank of motionless green forest. Jungle-stained water and an unbroken wall of vivid green.

“Why ... it’s beautiful!” Michel murmured to himself. He hardly knew what he’d expected. Jungle would naturally be green. Yet it was so amazingly green!

Back in the cage was hot seething impatience.

“If that was the pilot, why, in God’s name, don’t we start?”

“And why of all days have they cut out our walk on deck this morning? What harm would it have done to let us out of this for a little air?”

“Yes, and why not give us a chance to see what sort of place they’re shipping us to?”

From an old man who had been a seaman came the conclusion that they must be waiting for the tide.

“Well, while they wait they might let us out of this hell ... we’ve a right to fifteen minutes on deck.”

“Right?”

“Mon dieu! Who talks about rights? Convicts don’t have rights.”

Then there had come the grinding sound of pulling in the anchor.

The strong again possessed the ports. From the comments of the few who peered through the dirty circles of glass, those in the cage must construct the voyage up the Maroni.

But all were aware that engines had begun again to throb, and that the ship moved. They did not need the sight of the bank sliding by to tell them that they were off. And hearts contracted with sudden realization of the fact. In two hours, a passing sailor had said they would be at St. Laurent—at the distributing center of the great Devil’s Island penitentiary system which was to absorb them into itself. What would it be like? What did the comrades at the ports see?

Again only trees—miles of jungle—a twisting river—green deserted islands—trees.

Some one cried out, “Monkeys!”

“Monkeys? Where?”

“Like hell he saw monkeys!”

In the unbelievable heat of the cages, men dripping perspiration packed their canvas sacks and dressed themselves in the gray wool of the St. Martin prison. Some one had a mirror. It was passed around. “Coquetterie!” Michel laughed, combing his hair until it lay quite smooth, flat and damp, like yellow corn-silk, against his hot little head. He felt possessed by a bizarre, mocking gayety. His blood pulsed with the engines which drove them to the end of their long journey. It was enough to know that they were arriving, that they would soon be in Guiana, to which all were going with the fixed purpose of escaping from its prisons.

The boat gave two long melancholy whistles. The vibration died on the air. But there came no answering salute from the shore. A convict ship announces its arrival, but no siren condescends a response. In the cages this went unremarked, for some one was shouting that he could see the dock.

“And people—a lot of people. A few on the dock. Many on the river bank.” There were women in light dresses—bright colors under the trees.

The anchor went down, rattling over the ship’s side, until it came to rest in the thick deep mud of the river bottom.

“Now we’re coming up to the dock.”

“We’re alongside.”

“What are they waiting for? Why don’t they let us off?”

“They’re putting the gangway down.”

“Men—officers and keepers—are coming on board. They’re all in white—with helmets.”

Finally the doors of the cages opened. Keepers gave the order, and one by one the prisoners filed out, each bearing his sack upon his back.

They streamed up the two flights of iron ladders to the deck and then down the gangway to the wharf. And all, as they reached the deck, blinked in the strong white tropic light, and all, half blinded, stumbled down the gangway; hurrying as though propelled from the rear, shot, as it were, out of the bowels of the ship. Their progress seemed a flight from the sick crowding discomforts of the voyage, from the prisons of France, from trial and arrest. And yet on their faces was more than the bewilderment of sudden, blinding light; there was a groping curiosity on the threshold of their new life.

Keepers stationed at intervals barked commands:

“Not so fast.”

“Faster than that.”

On the deck Michel halted, as though there were no armed guard, as though he were merely a voyager before whom the spectacle of St. Laurent had suddenly unfolded.

Stems of cocoanut palms, graceful as the swaying bodies of nude dancers with green plumed headdresses trembling against a strangely exciting blue. Dark massed foliage of mango trees. Under the trees strong reds, pinks, blues, and greens of women’s dresses. Beyond were white houses set in green. And white foam-clouds drifting across the gorgeous blue.

No one had ever told him that Guiana was like this. He gave a little gasp. Whatever he was to feel here, he knew he was to live intensely.

A rough hand pushed him forward with a curse. He came quickly to himself. That was familiar. That was what a convict expected. The curse hurried him forward down the gangway. On the wide, sloping bottom step he slipped and fell.

Was it an evil omen, he wondered, as, flushed and confused, he scrambled to his feet?

No, he would not think of it. Besides, others were slipping and falling too. It was a bad step—unexpectedly sloping like that. Several men had gone flat. Why didn’t the keeper at the foot of the gangway warn them?

Now there came a fellow with a crutch; his leg had been amputated near the hip. Would he be able to make it?

The gangway rope was so low as to be useless. To steady themselves, the men put out one hand against the ship’s side; the other hand grasped the sack under which their back stooped.

There was a prisoner carrying a one-legged comrade on his back. On the dock he stood him up carefully, as though he’d been some great, mutilated toy which might be so balanced as to stand alone.

Thus, like gray gnomes hurrying from some dark dungeon, they poured from the ship to the wharf, where they were quickly formed in rows of four. There, keepers moved up and down the always lengthening line; counting, and comparing the numbers with the ship’s records.

In their rows of four the men stared silently. From the moment the doors of their cages had opened, dumbness had fallen upon them. There had been no sound but the heavy thumping of wooden-soled shoes, and the surly shouts of the keepers.

Now in the long, blinking line not a word was spoken. They stared in silence; their eyes gradually adjusted to the light opened wide as if in an effort to take in more than is possible to any normal range of vision.

They saw French women on the dock. They must be the wives of officials with special permissions, for obviously the crowd was kept to the river bank. Most of these women were fat, but one was pretty—in a thin yellow dress, and carrying a rose-flowered parasol. To men just driven out of the hold of a convict ship she had an unearthly cool daintiness.

The fours slowly moved forward as men were added to the rear line. Those in front saw that the women in gay colors on the bank were black, brown, yellow—negro, mulatto, Chinese. And Michel’s eyes traveled back to the fair girl under the blossoming parasol. Ah, St. Laurent might not be so bad!

He noticed perhaps a dozen men—barefoot, in soiled white trousers and blouses, across which were stamped numbers—long numbers, like 47,950, or 46,320. They had been making fast the ship’s ropes, and now they stood about, watching the drab stream. Michel concluded that these numbered men were convicts who had preceded him to Guiana, and he smiled tentatively. They returned a blank stare, and he quickly withdrew his greeting. Of course, he reasoned, they could not smile because of the guards who passed up and down the line. He extracted encouragement from the fact that one or two were smoking. It might not be so bad a life, and then in a few months he would have escaped. It did not occur to him to wonder why, if it were so simple, Number 47,950 or 46,320 had not done so.

He looked again for the woman under the bright parasol, but with a gesture of disgust she had moved away; out of range of the pungent odor of heavy flannel drenched with the perspiration of nearly seven hundred men, and away from the odor of nearly fourteen hundred leather shoes, also soaked with perspiration.

Michel returned to the contemplation of what might be seen of St. Laurent.

“Forward!” The word echoed along the silent staring line. Sacks were lifted. As he stooped to his, Michel sent a fleeting thought back to the ship. “You have brought me here, but a more beautiful ship than you shall soon carry me away.”

“En avant!”

The line advanced.

The hundreds of wooden soles clattered deafeningly over the plank flooring of the wharf. The rows were at first wavering, for men moved stiffly, uncertainly, after so many days of inaction. But gradually the column straightened to follow the stout khaki official who led the way.

They thus passed along the river-front. And always they were silent, always staring with eyes greedy to absorb St. Laurent before they should be marched through the prison gates for which they knew they must be headed.

Strange ugly black birds hopped awkwardly out of the way of their advance; flying up to perch on the roof-tops, where they sat in dumb rows of rusty black. There was a cart drawn by oxen with huge, flat, spreading horns, and bodies gray like elephants.

On the right was the river—the wide coppery river which separates French and Dutch Guiana. On its farther side they saw a little village, very white in the sun. The Dutch bank hung like a bright curtain-drop beyond the broad stream, which was in its turn the back-drop for a foreground where on piles of logs sat groups of men more haggard, more devastated, than any tramp ever seen in the Paris slums. They were white men, gaunt and ill, whose beards grew like weeds in an abandoned lot; rags of men, who sat staring at the marching column.

On the left, brick walls enclosed little gardens like green flowered aprons in front of small wooden houses. There were people on the steps and on the walls—many negro girls in dresses as brightly scarlet or purple as the hibiscus or the bougainvillea of the gardens. A negro woman threw kisses and cried, “Have courage, my boys!”

“Without doubt a prostitute,” they concluded.

At a small dock, opposite the white Dutch village across the river, the column turned left. Now they saw the great walls of the Penitentiary. They saw its iron gates over which stood the words, “Camp de la Transportation.” Of course they had expected it. For what else had the convict ship brought them so far? And yet ... coming with that sudden turn upon high walls and an iron gate, and seeing the irrevocable words, the column unconsciously slowed down in rhythm with the momentary interruption of its heart-beats. And the wooden soles dragged under the arching roof of trees.

The great gates opened. They showed low buildings in a courtyard carpeted with long afternoon shadows—shadows of breadfruit trees. An old man fell fainting against the gate-posts. A turnkey helped him to rise. The column marched into the courtyard. Half a dozen of the sick and dying were borne in on stretchers. And the gates closed.