WORK CURES SORROW
When Yann was on deck, he looked around him with sleep-laden eyes, over the familiar circle of the sea. That night the illimitable immensity showed itself in its most astonishingly simple aspects, in neutral tints, giving only the impression of depth. This horizon, which indicated no recognisable region of the earth, or even any geological age, must have looked so many times the same since the origin of time, that, gazing upon it, one saw nothing save the eternity of things that exist and cannot help existing.
It was not the dead of night, for a patch of light, which seemed to ooze from no particular point, dimly lit up the scene. The wind sobbed as usual its aimless wail. All was gray, a fickle gray, which faded before the fixed gaze. The sea, during its mysterious rest, hid itself under feeble tints without a name.
Above floated scattered clouds; they had assumed various shapes, for, without form, things cannot exist; in the darkness they had blended together, so as to form one single vast veiling.
But in one particular spot of the sky, low down on the waters, they seemed a dark-veined marble, the streaks clearly defined although very distant; a tender drawing, as if traced by some dreamy hand--some chance effect, not meant to be viewed for long, and indeed hastening to die away. Even that alone, in the midst of this broad grandeur, appeared to mean something; one might think that the sad, undefined thought of the nothingness around was written there; and the sight involuntarily remained fixed upon it.
Yann's dazzled eyes grew accustomed to the outside darkness, and gazed more and more steadily upon that veining in the sky; it had now taken the shape of a kneeling figure with arms outstretched. He began to look upon it as a human shadow rendered gigantic by the distance itself.
In his mind, where his indefinite dreams and primitive beliefs still lingered, the ominous shadow, crushed beneath the gloomy sky, slowly coalesced with the thought of his dead brother, as if it were a last token from him.
He was used to such strange associations of ideas, that thrive in the minds of children. But words, vague as they may be, are still too precise to express those feelings; one would need that uncertain language that comes in dreams, of which upon awakening, one retains merely enigmatical, senseless fragments.
Looking upon the cloud, he felt a deep anguish, full of unknown mystery, that froze his very soul; he understood full well now that his poor little brother would never more be seen; sorrow, which had been some time penetrating the hard, rough rind of his heart, now gushed in and brimmed it over. He beheld Sylvestre again with his soft childish eyes; at the thought of embracing him no more, a veil fell between his eyelids and his eyes, against his will; and, at first, he could not rightly understand what it was--never having wept in all his manhood. But the tears began to fall heavily and swiftly down his cheeks, and then sobs rent his deep chest.
He went on with his fishing, losing no time and speaking to no one, and his two mates, though hearing him in the deep silence, pretended not to do so, for fear of irritating him, knowing him to be so haughty and reserved.
In his opinion death was the end of it all. Out of respect he often joined in the family prayers for the dead, but he believed in no after-life of the soul. Between themselves, in their long talks, the sailors all said the same, in a blunt taken-for-granted way, as a well-known fact; but it did not stop them from believing in ghosts, having a vague fear of graveyards, and an unlimited confidence in protecting saints and images, and above all a deep respect for the consecrated earth around the churches.
