'Ti
Canotié.
309
It came again,—twice,—shaking the canoe like a great blow. Then Stéphane suddenly moved,—drew up his feet a little,—made as if to s p e a k : — " O u . . ."; but the speech failed at his lips,—ending in a sound like the moan of one trying to call out in sleep ;—and Maximilien's heart almost stopped beating. . . . Then Stéphane's limbs straightened again ; he made no more movement ;— Maximilien could not even hear him b r e a t h e . . . . All the sea had begun to whisper. A breeze was rising ;—Maximilien felt it blowing upon him. All at once it seemed to him that he had ceased to be afraid,—that he did not care what might happen. H e thought about a cricket he had one day watched in the harbor,—drifting out with the tide, on an atom of dead bark,—and he wondered what had become of it. Then he understood that he himself was the cricket,— still alive. But some boy had found him and pulled off his legs. There they were,— his own legs, pressing against him : he could still feel the aching where they had been pulled off ; and they had been dead so long they were now quite cold. . . . It was certainly Stéphane who had pulled them off. . . . T h e water was talking to him. It was saying the same thing over and over again,—louder each time, as if it thought he could not hear. But he heard it very well : — " B o n - D i é , li conm vent. . . li ka touché nou . . . nou pa save ouè li." (But why had the Bon-Dié shaken the wind ?) " Li pa ka fini zié," answered the water. . . . Ouille !—He might all the same care not to upset folks in the sea ! . . . Mi ! . . . But even as he thought these things, Maximilien became aware that a white, strange, bearded face was looking at him : the Bon-Dié was there,—bending over him with a lantern,—talking to him in a language he did not understand. And the Bon-Dié certainly had eyes,— great gray eyes that did not look wicked at all. H e