CHAPTER LXXX

At two o'clock on this same day on which he had concluded his bargain with Captain Kerjean, Yves, having bought some ordinary seaman's clothes, and changed clandestinely in a tavern on the quay, went on board the _Belle-Rose._

He went all over the ship, which was badly kept and had aspects of primitive roughness, but which nevertheless seemed a stout and handy vessel, built for speed and the hazards of the sea.

Compared with the ships of the navy it looked small, short, and, above all, empty; an air of abandonment with scarce a soul on board; even at anchor this kind of solitude struck a chill to the heart. Three or four rough-looking seamen lounged about the deck; they composed the whole crew, and were about to become, for some years perhaps, Yves' only companions.

They began by staring at one another before speaking.

Throughout the day the fine weather continued, warm and peaceful; a sort of melancholy summer persisting into the autumn and bringing with it a kind of tranquillity. And on Yves, too, his decision irrevocably taken, a calm descended.

They showed him his little locker, but he had scarcely anything to put in it. He washed himself in cold water, adjusted his new clothes, with an air of something like vanity; he wore no longer the livery of the state which he had often found so irksome; he felt at ease, freed from all the bonds of the past, almost as much as by death itself. He began to rejoice in his independence.

On the following morning, with the tide, the _Belle-Rose_ was going to put off. Yves scented the ocean, the life of the sea which was about to commence in the new fashion so long desired. For years this idea of deserting had obsessed him in a strange way, and now it was a thing accomplished. The decision he had taken raised him in his own eyes; he grew bigger as he felt himself outside the law; he was no longer ashamed, now that he was a deserter, of presenting himself before his wife; he even told himself that he would have the coinage to go to her that very night, before he went away, if only to take her the money he had received.

At certain moments, when the face of little Pierre passed before his eyes, his heart ached horribly; it seemed to him that this ship, silent and empty, was as it were a bier on which he was about to be carried living to his grave; he almost choked, tears welled into his eyes, but he checked them in time, with his strong will, by thinking of something else; and quickly he began to talk to his new-found friends. They discussed the method of manœuvring the ship with so small a crew, and the working of the large pulleys which had been multiplied everywhere to replace the arms of men, and which, so Yves thought, made the gear of the _Belle-Rose_ unduly heavy.

In the evening, when it was dark, he went to Recouvrance and climbed noiselessly to his door.

He listened first before opening it; there was no sound. He entered softly.

A lamp was burning on the table. His son was alone, asleep. He leaned over his wicker cradle, which had the scent of a bird's nest, and placed his lips very gently on those of his child in order to feel once more his soft breathing. Then he sat down near him and remained still, so that his face might be calm again when his wife should enter.