Yves awoke slowly towards evening. He had first of all sensations of
suffering, which came one by one, as after a kind of death. He was cold,
cold to the marrow of his bones.
Above all he was bruised and battered and benumbed--stretched for some
hours now on a hard bed: and he made a first effort, scarcely conscious,
to turn over. But his left foot, in which suddenly he felt a sharp pain,
was caught in a rigid thing against which he realized at once it was
vain to struggle. And he recognized the sensation: he understood now: he
was in irons.
He was already familiar with the inevitable morrow of wild nights of
pleasure: to be shackled by a ring to an iron bar for days on end! And
this place in which he must be, he divined it without taking the trouble
to open his eyes, this recess narrow as a cupboard, and dark, and damp,
with its fusty smell, and its dim pale light falling from an opening
above: the hold of the _Magicien._
But he confused this to-morrow with others which had been spent
elsewhere--far away, at the other side of the earth, in America, or in
the ports of China. . . . Was this for thrashing the alguazils of Buenos
Ayres? Or was it that sanguinary fight at Rosario which had brought him
to this? Or, again, the affair with the Russian sailors at Hong-Kong? He
was not very clear, to a thousand miles or so, having forgotten in what
part of the world he was.
All the winds and all the waves of the sea had carried the _Magicien_ to
all the countries of the world; they had shaken it, rolled it, battered
it from without, but without succeeding in disturbing the various things
which were within this hold--without displacing the diver's dress which
must be there hanging behind him, with its great eyes and morse-like
head, and without changing the smell of rats, of damp, and tar.
He still felt very cold, so horribly cold that it was like a pain in his
bones. And he realized that his clothes were wet and his body also. The
pitiless rain of the preceding night, the wind, the darkling sky,
returned vaguely to his memory. . . . He was not after all in the blue
countries of the Equator! He remembered now. He was in France, in
Brittany. This was the return of which he had so long dreamed.
But what had he done to be in irons already, almost before he had set
foot on his native land? He tried to remember but could not. Then
suddenly a recollection came to him, as of a dream: when they were
hoisting him on board, he pulled himself together a little, and said
that he would climb unaided, and then, as ill-luck would have it, he
found himself face to face with a certain old warrant officer whom he
held in aversion. And straightway he had fallen to abusing him most
vilely; then there had been some sort of scuffle and what happened
afterwards he did not know, for at that moment he had fallen inert again
and lost consciousness.
But then ... the leave that had been promised him to go to his village
of Plouherzel would not now be given him! . . . All the things for which
he had hoped, for which he had longed, during three years of misery,
were lost! He thought of his mother and his heart smote him sorely; his
eyes opened bewildered, seeing only what was within, dilated in a
strange fixity by a tumult of interior things. And, in the hope that it
was only an evil dream, he tried to shake his tortured foot in its iron
ring.
Then a burst of laughter, deep and resonant, went off like a firework in
the dark hold: a man, clothed in a woollen jersey fitting close to his
body, was standing beside Yves and looking at him. As he laughed he
threw back his handsome head and showed his white teeth with a feline
expression.
"Hello! so you are waking up?" asked the man in a sarcastic voice, which
vibrated with the accent of Bordeaux.
Yves recognized his friend Jean Barrada, the gunner, and looking up at
him he asked _if I knew._
"Tut! Tut!" said Barrada in his chaffing Gascon way. "Does he know? He
has been down three times and even brought the doctor here to have a
look at you; you were like a log and we were frightened about you. And I
am on duty here to let him know if you move."
"What for? I don't want him or anyone. Don't go, Barrada, do you
understand, I forbid you!"
And so it had happened again. He had come to grief once more, and once
more through his old failing. And, on every one of the rare occasions on
which he set foot on shore, it fell out thus and it seemed that he could
not help it. It must be true, what had been said to him, that this habit
was a terrible and a fatal one, and that a man was lost indeed when once
it had taken hold of him. In rage against himself he twisted his
muscular arms until they cracked; he half raised himself, grinding his
teeth; and then he fell back striking his head against the hard planks.
Oh! his poor mother, she was now quite near to him and he would not see
her, despite his longing of the last three years! . . . And this was his
return to France! What anguish and what misery!
"At least you must change your clothes," said Barrada. "To remain wet
through as you are won't do you any good. You will be ill."
"So much the better, Barrada! Leave me alone."
He spoke harshly, his eyes dark and menacing; and Barrada, who knew him
well, realized that the best thing to do was to leave him.
Yves turned his head and for a time buried his face in his upraised
arms. Then, fearful lest Barrada should imagine he was weeping, out of
pride he altered his position and gazed straight in front of him. His
eyes, in their wearied atony, kept a fierce fixity, and his lower lip,
protruded more than usual, expressed the savage defiance which in his
heart he was hurling at all the world. He was forming evil projects in
his head; ideas which he had already conceived in former days, in hours
of rebellion and despair, returned to him.
Yes, he would go away, like his brother Goulven, like both his brothers.
This time he had made up his mind, irrevocably. The life of those
sea-rovers whom he had encountered on the whale-boats of Oceania, or in
places of pleasure in the towns of La Plata, that life lived in the
hazard of the sea without law and without restraint, had for a long time
attracted him. It was in his blood for that matter; it was a thing
inherited.
To desert and sail the sea in a trading ship abroad, or to take part in
the ocean fishing, that is ever the dream which obsesses sailors, and
the best of them especially, in their moments of revolt.
There are good times in America for deserters. He would not be
successful, of that, in his bitterness, he felt sure; for he was
ordained to toil and misfortune; but, if poverty must be his lot, out
there at least he would be free!
His mother! Yes, in his dash for freedom, he would steal as far as
Plouherzel, in the night, and embrace her. In this again like his
brother Goulven, who had done the same thing many years before. He
remembered having seen him arrive one night, like a fugitive; he had
remained concealed during the day of farewell which he had spent at his
home. Their poor mother had wept bitterly, it is true. But what was
there to do? It was fate. And this brother Goulven, how forceful he
looked and how manly!
Except his mother, Yves at this moment held all the world in hate. He
thought of those years of his life spent in the service, in the
confinement of ships of war, under the whip of discipline; he asked
himself for whose profit and why. His heart overflowed with the
bitterness of despair, with desire for vengeance, with a rage to be
free. . . . And, as I was the cause of his re-engaging for five years in
the navy, he fumed against me and included me in his resentment against
the world in general.
Barrada had left him and the darkness of a December night came on.
Through the hatch of the hold the grey light of day was no longer to be
seen; only a damp mist now descended, which was icy cold.
A patrol had come and lit a lantern in a wire cage, and the objects in
the hold were illumined confusedly. Yves heard above him the evening
assembly, the slinging of the hammocks, and then the first cry of the
men of the watch marking the half-hours of the night.
Outside the wind was still blowing, and as gradually silence overtook
the business of men, the great unconscious voices of things became more
perceptible. High up there was a continuous roaring in the rigging; and
one heard the sea which lay all about us and which, from time to time,
shook everything, as if in impatience. At every shock, it rolled Yves'
head on the damp wood, and he put his hands underneath so that he might
suffer less.
Even the sea, this night, was angry and vicious; it beat against the
sides of the ship with a continuous noise.
At this hour no one, surely, would descend again into the hold. Yves was
alone, stretched on the floor, fettered, his foot in the iron ring, and
his teeth now were chattering.