There was a pause. The man had resumed rowing. Madame Bernier sat motionless, still examining her neighbor's physiognomy. The sinking sun, striking full upon his face, covered it with an almost lurid glare. Her own features being darkened against the western sky, the direction of them was quite indistinguishable to her companion.
'Why don't you leave the place?' she said at last.
'Leave it! how?' he replied, looking up with the rough avidity with which people of his class receive proposals touching their interests, extending to the most philanthropic suggestions that mistrustful eagerness with which experience has taught them to defend their own side of a bargain--the only form of proposal that she has made them acquainted with.
The man burst into a loud laugh. Madame Bernier's face bore more evidence of interest in the play of his features than of that discomfiture which generally accompanies the consciousness of ridicule.
'There's a lady's scheme for you! If you'll write for furnished apartments, _là-bas_, I don't desire anything better. But no leaps in the dark for me. America and Algeria are very fine words to cram into an empty stomach when you're lounging in the sun, out of work, just as you stuff tobacco into your pipe and let the smoke curl around your head. But they fade away before a cutlet and a bottle of wine. When the earth grows so smooth and the air so pure that you can see the American coast from the pier yonder, then I'll make up my bundle. Not before.'
'I'm afraid of nothing, _moi_. But I am not a fool either. I don't want to kick away my _sabots_ till I am certain of a pair of shoes. I can go barefoot here. I don't want to find water where I counted on land. As for America, I've been there already.'
'I've been to Brazil and Mexico and California and the West Indies.'
'_Pardio_, to China and India. Oh, I've seen the world! I've been three times around the Cape.'
'French and English and Spanish; mostly Spanish.'
'Oh, it was a dog's life. I'd drown any dog that would play half the mean tricks I used to see.'
'And you never had a hand in any yourself?'
'_Pardon_, I gave what I got. I was as good a Spaniard and as great a devil as any. I carried my knife with the best of them, and drew it as quickly, and plunged it as deep. I've got scars, if you weren't a lady. But I'd warrant to find you their mates on a dozen Spanish hides!'