OU_214051 UNIVERSA - Osmania University

THE SAILORS' RENDEZVOUS 315
bed! And yet he managed to leave her alone for weeks, until the
temptation became too strong!
Would he have acted like that if he had only been troubled by
jealousy?
The chief engineer prowled, fascinated, round the cabin, but
hadn't the nerve to pick the lock.
Then the epilogue: the return of the Ocian to France with a
cargo of damaged cod.
It must have been on the way back that the captain drew up that
sort of will in which he declared that no one must be accused of his
death.
Therefore he wanted to die! He wanted to kill himself! Nobody
but he was capable of taking the bearings, and he was sufficiently
imbued with the sailor's code to bring his ship back into port first.
Would he have killed himself because he had broken the regulations
by taking a woman with him? Would he have killed himself
because the oversalted fish would have to be sold at a few francs
below the current price?
Would he have killed himself because his crew, astonished by his
strange behaviour, thought he had gone mad?
He, the coolest and most meticulous captain in Fecamp? Whose
ship's papers were cited as a model? Who had lived so long in
Madame Bernard's placid house?
The ship came alongside. All the men jumped off and made for
the Rendei-Vous des Terre-Neuvas, where they could at last get a
drink of spirits.
They were all branded with the seal of the mystery! They were
all silent about certain things! They were all uneasy!
Because the captain had behaved in an inexplicable manner?
Fallut came ashore quite alone. He would have to wait until the
quays were deserted to take off Adele.
He walked a few steps. Two men were hiding: the operator and
Gaston Buzier, the woman's lover.
But that did not prevent a third man from leaping on the captain,
strangling him and pushing him into the dock.
•
And that had happened in the very place where the Ocian was
now floating in the black water. The body had caught on the chain
of the anchor... •