Yves, astonished, gazes at them, saying, in his boyish
manner: “Oh, I saw such a big one just
now, such a big one, it quite frightened me; I thought
it was a bat attacking me.”
A steersman who has captured a very curious specimen
carries it off carefully to press between the leaves
of his signal-book, like a flower. Another sailor,
passing by, taking his small roast to the oven in a
mess-bowl, looks at him quizzically and says:
“You had much better give it to me. I’d
cook it!”
STRANGE YEARNINGS
August 24th.
Nearly five days have passed since I abandoned my
little house and
Chrysantheme.
Since yesterday we have had a tremendous storm of
rain and wind (a typhoon that has passed or is passing
over us). We beat to quarters in the middle of
the night to lower the topmasts, strike the lower yards,
and take every precaution against bad weather.
The butterflies no longer hover around us; everything
tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes
of the mountain the trees shiver, the long grasses
bend low as if in pain; terrible gusts rack them with
a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth
fall like rain upon us.
In this land of pretty little trifles, this violent
tempest is out of harmony; it seems as if its efforts
were exaggerated and its music too loud.
Toward evening the dark clouds roll by so rapidly
that the showers are of short duration and soon pass
over. Then I attempt a walk on the mountain above
us, in the wet verdure: little pathways lead up
it, between thickets of camellias and bamboo.
Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the
courtyard of an old temple halfway up the hill, buried
in a wood of century plants with gigantic branches;
it is reached by granite steps, through strange gateways,
as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens.
The trees have also invaded this yard; the daylight
is overcast with a greenish tint, and the drenching
torrent of rain is full of torn-up leaves and moss.
Old granite monsters, of unknown shapes, are seated
in the corners, and grimace with smiling ferocity:
their faces are full of indefinable mystery that makes
me shudder amid the moaning music of the wind, in the
gloomy shadows of the clouds and branches.
They could not have resembled the Japanese of our
day, the men who had thus conceived these ancient
temples, who built them everywhere, and filled the
country with them, even in its most solitary nooks.
An hour later, in the twilight of that stormy day,
on the same mountain, I encountered a clump of trees
somewhat similar to oaks in appearance; they, too,
have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts of
undulating grass at their feet are laid low, tossed
about in every direction. There was suddenly
brought back to my mind my first impression of a strong
wind in the woods of Limoise, in the province of Saintonge,
twenty-eight years ago, in a month of March of my
childhood.
