The Dark Road: further adventures of Chéri-Bibi

Chapter I

THE NUT

The Nut lay on the scorching beach facing the terrible sea in which the hungry sharks, the warders of his prison, were disporting. The convict was like a weary animal at rest. In truth, he had availed himself of the "relaxation" at ten o'clock to seek out a little fresh air and seclusion between two precipitous crags which cut him off from the rest of the convict settlement. If only he could live alone! No longer to hear anything. No longer to see anything! No longer to think of anything. But how could he help thinking of what he had seen, of what he had been compelled to see, that morning?

A double execution had taken place that very morning as an awful but necessary example. It was a smart piece of work by Pernambouc, the prison executioner, and his assistant, "Monsieur Désiré." . . . Oh the horror of it!

The Nut was still shuddering from the sight of it. He was a young man in the fullness of his supple strength. He lay resting on his elbows, holding his chin in the cup of his hands, apparently indulging in an impossible dream. His broad-brimmed straw hat cast its shadow over the gloom of his penetrating gaze which stole to the distant skyline. The outline of his clean-shaven face as far as could be seen indicated strength of character and shrewdness. Notwithstanding the ineffaceable marks of prison life which soon transforms the youngest convict into an old man, the Nut seemed to be scarcely more than forty years of age.