Such was the method of his elevation, you will perceive: such the means by which he attained his ambitions, his uplifted position in the world--when he climbed the scaffold in the courtyard of the central prison on Ile de Nou and took his final look on life.
I was there. For my complicity at Mother Carron's that night and my refusal to testify at the trial they had shipped me back to the Collective. I stood in the front row. I was among those felons whose special privilege is their compulsory attendance at executions. I could miss nothing. Not a word nor a movement. Not the hurried mumbling of the death sentence. Not the ruffling of the drums that covered the fatal preparations.... Not even the icy chill to the marrow when we sank there in our ranks on the damp flagstones.
Just as well for me I was allowed to kneel, perhaps.... Never mind.... It does not bear talking of. Except one thing. One thing I recall to comfort me, as I saw it through a mist of tears, wrung with pity and with awe. And that was Bibi-Ri's last salute to my address before they lashed him on the bascule, under the knife.... He smiled at me, the little fellow. Even gayly. Bidding me note as plain as words how he held fast his good courage, how he had kept his counsel and his great secret in prison and would keep them to the end. How he apprehended and viewed clear-eyed the inconceivable grim jest of the family party there on the scaffold: himself and the executioner!
Then he looked away across the harbor, toward the anchorage, and he did not shift his gaze again from that goal of Nouméa. Taking his farewell, Monsieur. Taking his farewell in spirit and quite content, as he had said, I do believe. For this was the day, this the very morning, when the steamer left Nouméa bearing his beloved Zelie for home....
And one other thing I can tell you, crisp and clear. Do you remember when I began I said I had evened the score against M. de Nou? Evened it for always until that fiend shall be dragged to the nethermost level of hell and earn his reward? Evened it the only way it could be evened on this side of the grave?... And so I did. Never was such an evening! Listen:
Ask me not how it was done, by aid of what obscure pressure, through what underground channels. But the miniature--the miniature of Bibi-Ri! You recollect? Somehow. Monsieur--somehow, I say--it found its way into the panier with the head of Bibi-Ri. Somehow the new assistant, Bombiste's successor, discovered it when he "robbed the basket"--when he stooped to gather the little perquisites of office for his master. And somehow and finally it was laid straightway in the palm of M. de Nou....