As he stood in the blazing sunshine, the wind blowing his hair about his eyes, his eyes staring, astonished, fixed, as though he were gazing at Fortune herself, a black shadow passed over him. It was the shadow of a cormorant.
Away out across the waves other birds were coming to the feast; the wreck and the stranded corpses had been signalled for miles across the sea, for the sea, like the desert, has a watch-tower—the air, and a watchman who never leaves that tower—eternal Hunger.
The bird cried as it wheeled and the cry brought Gaspard to his senses. He glanced up, then down at the swarming beach; then, touching his pocket to make sure that the contents were safe, he turned from the horrors around him and made towards the southern beach, running.
He wished to be alone with his treasure. He shouted like a boy as he ran, taking the road through the bushes that Serpente’s sailors had cut for the boat. The jewelled snake round his throat glittered and flashed; never was there a more extraordinary picture than this man, half ragged, his clothes stained with sea-salt, his hair blowing on the wind, the jewelled serpent around his neck, running and shouting as he ran to the desolation around him, and with Fortune.
At the place where the palm trees lay prone on the sand he stopped, sat down, took the serpent of gold from around his throat and placed it on the sand beside him, and beside it the parcel.
Then from his pocket he took the knotted handkerchief and the ring. He placed the ring by the pearl and then he unknotted the handkerchief and poured the contents on the white sand between his legs.
Broken bits of gold like the twigs from which jewelled fruit had been torn, spinels, peridots, star sapphires, slab-shaped emeralds, cinnamon stones, a black pearl shaped like a pear, diamonds, an enormous turquoise _de la vieille roche_ sun-stricken, coloured, flashing, the treasure of Simon Serpente lay before Gaspard, other treasure there doubtless had been in coin and gold, but this was the cream of it, skimmed by Sagesse, selected no doubt during that calm behind which the sailor’s eye had seen the approaching hurricane.
Loot from the towns of Spanish South America, from ships plundered and scuttled, from women and from altars, all lay here in a confusion of colours. Some of these stones absolutely shouted of sacrilege, huge, and splendid, never could they have been worn as jewellery, except by emperors or by jewelled saints in the twilit and incense-laden air of some cathedral. Gaspard knew little of precious stones, but a child or a savage would have guessed the worth of this amazing collection of gems. For a moment after he had turned them out of the handkerchief, his breath came in gasps like the breath of a person dashed with cold water. He could not touch them for a moment, it was as though he were afraid of shattering an illusion. Then came the thought: