And so the bargeman, when he found himself in his presence seated before the table, was firmly resolved not to provoke an explosion.
“Look here,” said Captain Antifer, looking him in the face, “answer me without prevarication, for you always appear as though you did not understand me. After all the skipper of the Charmante Amélie never had occasion to fix his position. It is not between the banks of Rance—a mere rivulet—that it is necessary to take altitudes, observe the sun, the moon, the stars—”
And in this pleasant way we may be sure it was Antifer’s intention to show the immense difference between a coaster-skipper and a bargee.
The excellent Tregomain smiled, and looked at the many-coloured rays of the handkerchief on his knee.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, my friend.”
“Well, once for all, do you know exactly what a latitude is?”
“Very nearly.”
“Do you know that it is a circle parallel to the Equator; that it is divided into three hundred and sixty degrees, which means 2160 minutes, or 129,600 seconds?”
“Why should I not know it?” replied the smiling Tregomain.
“And do you know that an arc of fifteen degrees corresponds to an hour of time, and an arc of fifteen minutes to a minute of time, and an arc of fifteen seconds to a second of time?”
“Would you like me to repeat it?”
“No, that would be useless. Well, I have this latitude of 24 degrees 59 minutes north of the Equator. Well, in this parallel, which contains three hundred and sixty degrees—three hundred and sixty, you understand—there are three hundred and fifty-nine which are of no more use to me than an anchor without flukes. But there is one, and only one, which I do not know, and never shall know until I have been told the longitude that crosses it, and there, at that very spot, there are millions—Don’t smile—”
“I am not smiling, my friend.”
“Yes, millions which are mine, which I have the right to dig up, the day I find the place where they are buried—”
“Well,” replied the bargeman sweetly, “you must wait patiently until the messenger comes with the good news.”
“Patiently—patiently. What is there that flows in your veins?”
“Syrup, I imagine—nothing but syrup!” replied Tregomain.
“And in mine it is quicksilver; there is saltpetre dissolved in my blood—I cannot rest—I eat myself, I devour myself—”
“Really you should take it calmly.”
“Calmly! Do you forget that we are in ’62; that my father died in ’54; that he had possessed this secret ever since ’42; and that for twenty years we have been waiting for the word of this confounded charade—”
“Twenty years!” murmured Tregomain, “how the time passes! Twenty years ago I was still in command of the Charmante Amélie.”
“Who is talking about the Charmante Amélie?” asked Antifer. “Are we talking about the Charmante Amélie or the latitude in this letter?”
And beneath the bargeman’s blinking eyes he tossed the famous letter, all old and yellow, on which figured the monogram of Kamylk Pasha. “Yes, this letter, this confounded letter,” he continued, “this diabolical letter, which I have sometimes been tempted to tear up, to reduce to cinders—”
“And that might perhaps be wise!” ventured the bargeman.
“See here, Tregomain,” said Antifer, his eyes flashing, his voice ringing, “mind you never answer me like that again.”
“Never.”
“And if ever, in a moment of madness, I wish to destroy this letter, which is as good as a title-deed to me—if ever I am unreasonable enough to forget what I owe to myself and mine, and you do not prevent me—”
“I will prevent you, my friend; I will prevent you,” Tregomain hastened to reply.
Antifer in great excitement seized his glass of brandy, chinked it against that of the bargeman and said,—
“To your health, Captain!”
“To yours!” replied Tregomain, lifting his glass up to his eyes, and then setting it back again on the table.
Antifer became thoughtful, running his feverish hand through his hair, muttering to himself, and grinding the pebble between his teeth. Suddenly he crossed his arms and looked at his friend.
“Do you know where this wretched latitude goes?”
“How could I not do so?” asked the bargeman, who had submitted a hundred times to this lesson in geography.
“Never mind! There are some things we cannot know too well.” And, opening the atlas at the map of the world,—“Look!” he said in a tone that admitted of neither hesitation nor reply.
Tregomain looked.
“You see St. Malo, don’t you?”
“Yes, and there is the Rance.”
“Never mind the Rance! You will make me curse the Rance! Get on to the meridian of Paris, and run down to the twenty-fourth parallel.”
“I run down.”
“Traverse France, Spain. Enter Africa; cross Algeria; reach the Tropic of Cancer. There, above Timbuctoo—”
“I am there.”
“Well now, we are on this famous latitude.”
“Yes, here we are.”
“Now run along to the east. Cross Africa, walk over the Red Sea, stride through Arabia. Take your hat off to the Sultan of Muscat, jump into India, leaving Bombay and Calcutta to starboard, skirt the base of China, run across Formosa, the Pacific, the Sandwich Islands—do you follow me?”
“I am following you,” replied Tregomain, wiping his head with his huge handkerchief.
“Well, here we are in America, in Mexico, then in the Gulf, then near Cuba. You jump the Straits of Florida, cross the Atlantic, skirt the Canaries, reach Africa, come up the Paris meridian and return to St. Malo after having made the tour of the globe on the twenty-fourth parallel.”
“Yes!” said the complaisant bargeman.
“And now,” continued Antifer, “we have traversed the two continents, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian oceans, in which islands and islets are in thousands, and can you tell me where my millions are hidden?”
“That is what we do not know.”
“That is what we shall know.”
“Yes—that is what we shall know when the messenger—”
Antifer took the second glass of brandy, which had not been sipped by his friend.
“To your health!” he said.
“To yours!” said Tregomain, clinking the empty glass against the full one which was once his.
Ten o’clock struck. A loud knock shook the street door.
“If that