THE JOURNEY
81
How seriously did he mean these threats, whose own office and
"department" gave every impression of having been forgotten by
higher-ups? Empty desks and dust everywhere, a wild scatter of files.
Did an officer of the Forces Libres go through them every night?
Braggadocio, these warnings. All the same each morning, when at the
villa, I look out at once to see whether the
Agracorinth
is still there,
four or five miles at sea. Or had she been sunk-silently, without
explosion-during the night? There were mornings she still floated,
but hidden by the summer haze. Other days she stood out so clearly
I thought I could even see the lonely lank figure of Beetrare on the
forward hatch, and his laundry out to dry. I even fancied I could
also see, hundreds of miles away, the cone of the volcano on the
supply island: a tip just above the horizon. A gray and white cone,
faint and evanescent as smoke. And occult in its changing visibility,
like the ship, but free from the menaces of the shore.
