Aye to all,
There's one (Picture 35) that shows the sprit with what looks like a sock over it and a couple of others that show, or at least suggest, fittings (Photo 53 for instance) but there's still no real answer.
One thing I did notice, apart from the fact that the French seem to prefer to photograph from the back, rather like the old Renault ads, was that Photo 23 shows a later ship with the same spar above a bow tube. Could it be that in this particular case the spar was part of the bow tube system?