CHAPTER LXXXII

And the Celts mourned three barren rocks under a lowering sky, in the heart of a gulf dotted with islets.

--G. FLAUBERT, SALAMMBÔ.

The Coral Sea! At the Antipodes of our old world. Nothing but blue anywhere. Around the ship which proceeds slowly, the infinite blue spreads its perfect circle. The surface shines and glitters under the eternal sun.

Yves is there, alone, carried high in the air in a thing which oscillates slowly; he passes, in his top.

He gazes, with unseeing eyes at the limitless circle; he is as it were dazed with space and light. His expressionless eyes come to rest at hazard, for, everywhere, all is alike.

Everywhere, all is alike. . . . It is the great blind, unconscious splendour of things which men believe have been made for them. Over the surface of the waters pass life-giving breezes which no one breathes; warmth and light are poured out in abundance; all the sources of life are open on the silent solitudes of the sea and fill them with a strange glory.

The surface shines and glitters under the eternal sun. The great blaze of noon falls into the blue desert in a useless and wasted magnificence.

Presently Yves thinks he can discern in the distance a trail less blue, and his attention, which just now wandered idly over the sparkling and tranquil monotony, is concentrated upon it: it is no doubt the sea breaking into foam over the whiteness of coral, breaking on isles unknown, level with the water, which no map has yet shown.

How far away is Brittany--and the green lanes of Toulven--and his little son!

Yves has come out of his dream, and is watching, his hand shading his eyes, that distant trail which still shows white.

He does not look like a deserter, for he is wearing still the blue collar of the navy.

Now he can distinguish the breakers and the coral quite clearly, and he leans over a little in the air, and calls out to those below: "Reefs on the port bow."

No, Yves has not deserted, for the ship he is on is the warship _Primauguet._

He has not deserted, for he is still with me, and when he announced from aloft the approach of the reefs it was I who climbed up to him in his top, to reconnoitre with him.

At Brest on that unhappy day when he had decided to leave us, I had seen him pass in common seaman's garb, carrying his sailor's kit so neatly folded in a handkerchief, and I had followed him at a distance as far as Recouvrance. I had let Marie enter and then I had entered too, after them; and as he came out he had found me waiting outside his door, barring his passage with my outspread arms--as, once before, at Toulven. Only this time it was not merely a matter of checking a childish caprice; I was about to engage in a supreme struggle with him.

And long and cruel the struggle was, and there was a moment when I almost lost heart and abandoned him to the gloomy destiny which was carrying him away. And then, abruptly, it had ended. Tears came to save him, tears that had been wanting to come for the last two days--but could not, so little used were his eyes to this form of weakness. Then we put little Pierre, who had just awakened, on his knee; his little Pierre bore him no ill-will at all, but put his arms straightway round his neck. And Yves, at last, had said to me:

"Very well, brother, I will do anything you tell me to do. But, no matter what, you must see now that I am done for. . . ."

His case was indeed very serious and I did not know myself what course to take: it was a sort of rebellion, to have escaped from the ship after having been sentenced to irons, and then to have absented himself for three days! I had been tempted to say to them, after I had made them embrace: "Desert both of you, all three of you, my dear friends; for it is too late now to do anything better. Let Yves go away on the _Belle-Rose_ and do you go and join him in America."

But no, that was too desperate a remedy, to abandon for ever their Breton land, and the little house at Toulven, and their old parents!

So, trembling a little at my responsibility, I had taken the contrary decision: to return that very evening the advance already received, to free Yves from the hands of this Captain Kerjean, and, when morning came, as soon as the port should open, to hand him over to the naval authorities. Anxious days had followed, days of applications and of waiting, and at last, with much leniency and kindness, the matter had been settled in this way: a month in irons and six months' suspension from the rating of petty officer, with return to the pay of a simple sailor.

That is how my poor Yves, embarked once more with me on this _Primauguet_, finds himself back in the crow's nest, again a topman as before, and performing the rough work he knew of old.

Standing, both of us, on the yard of the foresail, our bodies swung out into the void, with one hand shading our eyes, with the other holding on to the cordage, we watched together, in the distance of the resplendent blue solitudes, the white line of breakers growing ever more distinct; the continuous noise they made was like the distant sound of a church organ in the midst of the silence of the sea.

It was in fact a large coral island which no navigator had hitherto discovered; it had risen slowly from the depths below; century after century it had put forth patiently its branches of stone; even now it was only an immense crown of white foam, making, amid the infinite calm of the sea, the noise of a living thing, a kind of mysterious and eternal murmuring.

Everywhere else the blue expanse was uniform, safe, deep, infinite; we could proceed on our way without misgiving.

"You have won _the double_, brother," I said to Yves.

I meant: the double ration of wine at dinner. On board, this _double_ is the usual recompense for a sailor who has been the first to sight land or to announce a danger--or for him who catches a rat without the help of a trap--or even for him who has turned himself out more smartly than the others for the Sunday inspection.

Yves smiled, but with the air of one who suddenly has a sombre thought.

"You know very well that now wine and I . . . But that's no matter, I can give it to the topmen at my table. They will drink it willingly enough."

It was the fact that since the day when he had pushed little Pierre against the fire-irons in the grate, far away, in Brest, he had drunk only water. He had sworn this on the poor little wounded head, and it was the first solemn oath of his life.

We were talking together, in the pure virgin air, among the loosely hanging sails, which looked very white in the sun, when the sound of a whistle came from below, a quite distinctive whistle which meant in nautical language: "The leader of the foresail top is wanted below. Let him come down quickly!"

It was Yves who was leader of the foresail top; he descended in great haste to see what was wanted of him. The second-in-command had asked to see him in his room; and I knew very well why.

In the remote and tranquil seas in which we were cruising the sailors became rather hazy about the seasons, the months and the days; they lost the sense of the passage of time in the monotony of the days.

And in fact summer and winter had lost their qualities; they were no longer recognizable, for the climate was different. Nor did the things of nature serve now to mark them out. There was always this infinity of water, always this wooden house in which we dwelt, and, in the spring, there came no touch of green.

Yves had resumed without difficulty his former occupation, his habits of topman, his life in the crow's nest, well-nigh naked, exposed to wind and sun, with his knife and his "mooring." He had ceased to count the days because they were all alike, merged one into another by the regularity of the watches, by the alternation of a sun that was always hot with nights that were always clear. He had accepted this time of exile without measuring it.

But to-day was the day when his six months of punishment expired; and the captain had to tell him to take back his stripes, his silver whistle and his authority as petty officer. He did so with much cordiality and shook him by the hand; for Yves, while his punishment had lasted, had shown himself exemplary in conduct and courage and no top had ever been kept like his.

Yves came back to me with a broad smile of happiness:

"Why didn't you tell me it was to-day?"

He had been promised that, if he went on as he was going, his punishment would soon be quite forgotten. Clearly, the oath he had taken on the wounded head of his little Pierre, at the end of that dreadful evening, was succeeding beyond his hope.