Then, one heard the sound of their laughter, which in two different intonations had the same freshness and the same youthfulness. Ramuntcho, with an habitual brusque and graceful gesture, changed his waistcoat from one shoulder to the other, pulled his cap on the side, and, with no other farewell than a sign of the head, they separated, for Dolores was coming from the end of the road.

CHAPTER VIII.

Midnight, a winter night, black as Hades, with great wind and whipping rain. By the side of the Bida.s.soa, in the midst of a confused extent of ground with treacherous soil that evokes ideas of chaos, in slime that their feet penetrate, men are carrying boxes on their shoulders and, walking in the water to their knees, come to throw them into a long thing, blacker than night, which must be a bark--a suspicious bark without a light, tied near the bank.

It is again Itchoua's band, which this time will work by the river. They have slept for a few moments, all dressed, in the house of a receiver who lives near the water, and, at the needed hour, Itchoua, who never closes but one eye, has shaken his men; then, they have gone out with hushed tread, into the darkness, under the cold shower propitious to smuggling.

On the road now, with the oars, to Spain whose fires may be seen at a distance, confused by the rain. The weather is let loose; the shirts of the men are already wet, and, under the caps pulled over their eyes, the wind slashes the ears. Nevertheless, thanks to the vigor of their arms, they were going quickly and well, when suddenly appeared in the obscurity something like a monster gliding on the waters. Bad business!

It is the patrol boat which promenades every night. Spain's customs officers. In haste, they must change their direction, use artifice, lose precious time, and they are so belated already.

At last they have arrived without obstacle near the Spanish sh.o.r.e, among the large fishermen's barks which, on stormy nights, sleep there on their chains, in front of the "Marine" of Fontarabia. This is the perilous instant. Happily, the rain is faithful to them and falls still in torrents. Lowered in their skiff to be less visible, having ceased to talk, pushing the bottom with their oars in order to make less noise, they approach softly, softly, with pauses as soon as something has seemed to budge, in the midst of so much diffuse black, of shadows without outlines.

Now they are crouched against one of these large, empty barks and almost touching the earth. And this is the place agreed upon, it is there that the comrades of the other country should be to receive them and to carry their boxes to the receiving house--There is n.o.body there, however!--Where are they?--The first moments are pa.s.sed in a sort of paroxysm of expectation and of watching, which doubles the power of hearing and of seeing. With eyes dilated, and ears extended, they watch, under the monotonous dripping of the rain--But where are the Spanish comrades? Doubtless the hour has pa.s.sed, because of this accursed custom house patrol which has disarranged the voyage, and, believing that the undertaking has failed this time, they have gone back--

Several minutes flow, in the same immobility and the same silence. They distinguish, around them, the large, inert barks, similar to floating bodies of beasts, and then, above the waters, a ma.s.s of obscurities denser than the obscurities of the sky and which are the houses, the mountains of the sh.o.r.e--They wait, without a movement, without a word.

They seem to be ghosts of boatmen near a dead city.

Little by little the tension of their senses weakens, a la.s.situde comes to them with the need of sleep--and they would sleep there, under this winter rain, if the place were not so dangerous.

Itchoua then consults in a low voice, in Basque language, the two eldest, and they decide to do a bold thing. Since the others are not coming, well! so much the worse, they will go alone, carry to the house over there, the smuggled boxes. It is risking terribly, but the idea is in their heads and nothing can stop them.

"You," says Itchoua to Ramuntcho, in his manner which admits of no discussion, "you shall be the one to watch the bark, since you have never been in the path that we are taking; you shall tie it to the bottom, but not too solidly, do you hear? We must be ready to run if the carbineers arrive."

So they go, all the others, their shoulders bent under the heavy loads, the rustling, hardly perceptible, of their march is lost at once on the quay which is so deserted and so black, in the midst of the monotonous dripping of the rain. And Ramuntcho, who has remained alone, crouches at the bottom of the skiff to be less visible becomes immovable again, under the incessant sprinkling of the rain, which falls now regular and tranquil.

They are late, the comrades--and by degrees, in this inactivity and this silence, an irresistible numbness comes to him, almost a sleep.

But now a long form, more sombre than all that is sombre, pa.s.ses by him, pa.s.ses very quickly,--always in this same absolute silence which is the characteristic of these nocturnal undertakings: one of the large Spanish barks!--Yet, thinks he, since all are at anchor, since this one has no sails nor oars--then, what?--It is I, myself, who am pa.s.sing!--and he has understood: his skiff was too lightly tied, and the current, which is very rapid here, is dragging him:--and he is very far away, going toward the mouth of the Bida.s.soa, toward the breakers, toward the sea--

An anxiety has taken hold of him, almost an anguish--What will he do?--What complicates everything is that he must act without a cry of appeal, without a word, for, all along this coast, which seems to be the land of emptiness and of darkness, there are carbineers, placed in an interminable cordon and watching Spain every night as if it were a forbidden land--He tries with one of the long oars to push the bottom in order to return backward;--but there is no more bottom; he feels only the inconsistency of the fleeting and black water, he is already in the profound pa.s.s--Then, let him row, in spite of everything, and so much for the worse--!

With great trouble, his forehead perspiring, he brings back alone against the current the heavy bark, worried, at every stroke of the oar, by the small, disclosing grating that a fine ear over there might so well perceive. And then, one can see nothing more, through the rain grown thicker and which confuses the eyes; it is dark, dark as in the bowels of the earth where the devil lives. He recognizes no longer the point of departure where the others must be waiting for him, whose ruin he has perhaps caused; he hesitates, he waits, the ear extended, the arteries beating, and he hooks himself, for a moment's reflection, to one of the large barks of Spain--Something approaches then, gliding with infinite precaution on the surface of the water, hardly stirred: a human shadow, one would think, a silhouette standing:--a smuggler, surely, since he makes so little noise! They divine each other, and, thank G.o.d!

it is Arrochkoa; Arrochkoa, who has untied a frail, Spanish skiff to meet him--So, their junction is accomplished and they are probably saved all, once more!

But Arrochkoa, in meeting him, utters in a wicked voice, in a voice tightened by his young, feline teeth, one of those series of insults which call for immediate answer and sound like an invitation to fight.

It is so unexpected that Ramuntcho's stupor at first immobilizes him, r.e.t.a.r.ds the rush of blood to his head. Is this really what his friend has just said and in such a tone of undeniable insult?--

"You said?"

"Well!" replies Arrochkoa, somewhat softened and on his guard, observing in the darkness Ramuntcho's att.i.tudes. "Well! you had us almost caught, awkward fellow that you are!--"

The silhouettes of the others appear in another bark.

"They are there," he continues. "Let us go near them!"

And Ramuntcho takes his oarsman's seat with temples heated by anger, with trembling hands--no--he is Gracieuse's brother; all would be lost if Ramuntcho fought with him; because of her he will bend the head and say nothing.

Now their bark runs away by force of oars, carrying them all; the trick has been played. It was time; two Spanish voices vibrate on the black sh.o.r.e: two carbineers, who were sleeping in their cloaks and whom the noise has awakened!--And they begin to hail this flying, beaconless bark, not perceived so much as suspected, lost at once in the universal, nocturnal confusion.

"Too late, friends," laughs Itchoua, while rowing to the uttermost.

"Hail at your ease now and let the devil answer you!"

The current also helps them; they go into the thick obscurity with the rapidity of fishes.

There! Now they are in French waters, in safety, not far, doubtless, from the slime of the banks.

"Let us stop to breathe a little," proposes Itchoua.

And they raise their oars, halting, wet with perspiration and with rain.

They are immovable again under the cold shower, which they do not seem to feel. There is heard in the vast silence only the breathing of chests, little by little quieted, the little music of drops of water falling and their light rippling. But suddenly, from this bark which was so quiet, and which had no other importance than that of a shadow hardly real in the midst of so much night, a cry rises, superacute, terrifying: it fills the emptiness and rents the far-off distances--It has come from those elevated notes which belong ordinarily to women only, but with something hoa.r.s.e and powerful that indicates rather the savage male; it has the bite of the voice of jackals and it preserves, nevertheless, something human which makes one shiver the more; one waits with a sort of anguish for its end, and it is long, long, it is oppressive by its inexplicable length--It had begun like a stag's bell of agony and now it is achieved and it dies in a sort of laughter, sinister and burlesque, like the laughter of lunatics--

However, around the man who has just cried thus in the front of the bark, none of the others is astonished, none budges. And, after a few seconds of silent peace, a new cry, similar to the first, starts from the rear, replying to it and pa.s.sing through the same phases,--which are of a tradition infinitely ancient.

And it is simply the "irrintzina", the great Basque cry which has been transmitted with fidelity from the depth of the abyss of ages to the men of our day, and which const.i.tutes one of the strange characteristics of that race whose origins are enveloped in mystery. It resembles the cry of a being of certain tribes of redskins in the forests of America; at night, it gives the notion and the unfathomable fright of primitive ages, when, in the midst of the solitudes of the old world, men with monkey throats howled.

This cry is given at festivals, or for calls of persons at night in the mountains, and especially to celebrate some joy, some unexpected good fortune, a miraculous hunt or a happy catch of fish in the rivers.

And they are amused, the smugglers, at this game of the ancestors; they give their voices to glorify the success of their undertaking, they yell, from the physical necessity to be compensated for their silence of a moment ago.

But Ramuntcho remains mute and without a smile. This sudden savagery chills him, although he has known it for a long time; it plunges him into dreams that worry and do not explain themselves.

And then, he has felt to-night once more how uncertain and changing is his only support in the world, the support of that Arrochkoa on whom he should be able to count as on a brother; audacity and success at the ball-game will return that support to him, doubtless, but a moment of weakness, nothing, may at any moment make him lose it. Then it seems to him that the hope of his life has no longer a basis, that all vanishes like an unstable chimera.

CHAPTER IX.

It was New Year's eve.

All the day had endured that sombre sky which is so often the sky of the Basque country--and which harmonizes well with the harsh mountains, with the roar of the sea, wicked, in the depths of the Bay of Biscay.

In the twilight of this last day of the year, at the hour when the fires retain the men around the hearths scattered in the country, at the hour when home is desirable and delicious, Ramuntcho and his mother were preparing to sit at the supper table, when there was a discreet knock at the door.

The man who was coming to them from the night of the exterior, at the first aspect seemed unknown to them; only when he told his name (Jose Bidegarray, of Hasparitz) they recalled the sailor who had gone several years ago to America.

"Here," he said, after accepting a chair, "here is the message which I have been asked to bring to you. Once, at Rosario in Uruguay, as I was talking on the docks with several other Basque immigrants there, a man, who might have been fifty years old, having heard me speak of Etchezar, came to me.

"'Do you come from Etchezar?' he asked.

"'No,' I replied, 'but I come from Hasparitz, which is not far from Etchezar.'

"Then he put questions to me about all your family. I said:

"'The old people are dead, the elder brother was killed in smuggling, the second has disappeared in America; there remain only Franchita and her son, Ramuntcho, a handsome young fellow who must be about eighteen years old today.'

"He was thinking deeply while he was listening to me.