CHAPTER LXIII

CHERBOURG, 27_th December_, 1880.

At seven o'clock in the morning word is brought to me that Yves, dead-drunk, is in a boat alongside. Some old friends of his, topmen on the _Vénus_, have kept him drinking through the night in low taverns--to celebrate their return from the Antilles.

I am of the watch. There is no one yet on deck, save some sailors busy with their furbishing--but devoted fellows these, known for many a day and to be counted on. Four men get him aboard, and furtively carry him down a hatch and hide him in my room.

A bad beginning, truly, on board this _Sèvre_, where I had taken him under my charge as on a kind of probation, and where he had promised to be exemplary. And the black thought came to me for the first time that he was lost, beyond redemption, no matter what I might do to save him from himself. And also this other thought, more desolating still, that perhaps he was deficient in certain qualities of heart.

Throughout the day Yves was like a dead man.

He had lost his bonnet, his purse, his silver whistle, and there was a dent in his head.

It was not until about six o'clock in the evening that he showed sign of life. Then, like a child awakening, he smiled--a sign this that he was still drunk, for otherwise he would not smile--and asked for food.

Then I said to Jean-Marie, my faithful servant, a fisherman from Audierne:

"Go to the ward-room kitchen and see if you can get him some soup."

Jean-Marie brought the soup, and Yves began to turn his spoon this way and that, as if he did not remember which way to hold it:

"Come on, Jean-Marie, make him eat it!"

"It is too salty!" said Yves suddenly, lying back, making a wry face, his accent very Breton, his eyes again half-closed.

"Too salty! Too salty!" . . .

Then he fell asleep again, and Jean-Marie and I burst out laughing.

I was in no frame of mind for laughter, but this notion and this spoilt child's air were too comical. . . .

Later, at ten o'clock, Yves came round, got up furtively, and disappeared.

For two days he remained hidden in the crews' quarters in the bow of the ship, only showing himself for his watch and for drill, hanging his head, not daring to look at me.

Oh! these resolutions taken twenty times and as many times broken. . . . We dare not take them again or at any rate dare not say that we have taken them. The will flags, and the days slip by while we wait inert for the return of courage and self-respect.

Slowly, however, we came back to our normal manner of existence. I used to call him in the evenings and we would walk up and down the deck together for hours on end, talking almost in the old way, in the mournful wind and the fine rain. He had still the same fashion of thinking and speaking as before, very naïve and at the same time very profound; it was the same, but with just the least suggestion of constraint; there was something frigid between us which would not thaw. I waited for a word of repentance which did not come.

Winter was advancing, the winter of the Channel, which envelopes everything--thoughts, and men, and things--in the same grey twilight. The cold dark days had come, and our evening walk was taken at a quicker pace in the damp wind of the sea.

There were times when I wanted to grip his hand and say to him: "Come, brother, I have forgiven you; let us forget all about it." But I checked the words on my lips; after all it was for him to ask forgiveness; and there remained a kind of haughty coldness in my manner which kept him at a distance from me.

This _Sèvre_ was not a success for us at all, that was clear.