On board the _Médée_, May, 1877.
"This suits me as gaiters suit a rabbit," said Yves, with a boyish air,
as he contemplated his pagoda sleeves and his blue robe of Burmese silk.
It was at Yé, a Siamese town, on the Bay of Bengal. He was sitting in
the background of a sailors' tavern on a stool of Chinese design.
He was very drunk, and after he had smiled thus to see himself clothed
in the fashion of a Chinese mandarin, his eyes became dull and
lustreless, his lip curled and disdainful. At such moments there was
nothing he might not do, as in his bad days of old.
By his side was big Kerboul, also a foresail topman, who had just had
brought to him fifteen glasses of a very expensive Singapore liquor, and
had drained them one after the other, breaking them afterwards with
blows of his fist, in the deadly serious way characteristic of the
drunken Breton. And the debris of these fifteen glasses covered the
table on which now he had put his feet.
And Barrada, the gunner, was there too, handsome and calm as usual,
smiling his feline smile. The topman had invited him, exceptionally, to
their feast. And Le Hello also, and Barazère, and half a dozen others
of the mainsail and four of the bow-sprit--all attitudinizing, with
superb airs, in their Eastern robes.
And even Le Hir was there, a half-witted fellow from the island of Sein,
whom they had brought as a laughing-stock, and who was drinking refuse
mixed with his bowl of rum. And, to complete the tale, two sea-rovers,
two blacklisted, deserters from every flag, old acquaintances of Yves',
who had found them, that evening, on the beach and, out of kindness,
brought them along.
It was to celebrate the feast of Saint Epissoire, the patron saint of
the topmen, that they had foregathered here, and custom required that I
should put in an appearance among them, as navigating officer.
For a year past they had not put foot on land. And the Commander, who
was well satisfied with his crew, had permitted them, as being the most
meritorious, to celebrate as in France the anniversary of their patron
saint. He had selected this town of Yé, because it seemed to him the
least dangerous for us, the people there being more inoffensive than
elsewhere and more easily appeased.
In this room, which was large and low-pitched, with paper walls, there
was, at the same time as us, a band of sailors from an American
merchantship, who were drinking with sandy-haired, long-toothed women
escaped from the brothels of British India.
And these intruders annoyed the topmen who wanted to be alone and let
them see it.
_Eleven o'clock._ The candles had just been renewed in the coloured
lanterns, and outside the Siamese town was asleep in the warm night.
Inside one felt that trouble was brewing, that arms and fists were
itching for a fight.
"Who are these fellows?" said one of the Americans, who spoke with a
Marseilles accent. "Who are these Frenchies who come here to lay down
the law? And that one who is with them"--this was meant for me--"the
youngest of them all, who gives himself airs and seems to be in
command?"
"That one," said Yves, with the air of one who did not deign to turn his
head, "that one--any one who touches him will need to be a man!"
"That one!" said Barrada. "Do you want to know who he is? Wait a moment
and we will tell you, without troubling him to speak for himself; and
you will see, my boys, _if that will enlighten you!_"
Yves had already hurled at them his Chinese stool, which had burst the
wall just above their heads, and Barrada, with a first blow, had knocked
over two of them. The others overthrown in turn on top of the first two,
all struggling on the ground. Kerboul began to belabour the mass
unmercifully with his table, scattering over his enemies the debris of
his fifteen glasses.
Then we heard outside the sounding of gongs and the ringing of bells,
rustlings of silk and shrill little laughs of women.
And the dancing-girls entered. (The topmen had asked for dancing-girls.)
The fighting stopped when they appeared, for they were strange to see.
Painted like Chinese idols, covered with gold and glistening stones, the
eyes half-closed, looking like little white slits, they advanced into
our midst with the smiles of dead women, holding their arms in the air
and spreading out their slender fingers, the long nails of which were
enclosed in golden sheaths.
At the same time came perfumes of balm and incense; little sticks had
been set alight in a warming-dish, and an odorous, languorous smoke
spread in a blue cloud.
The gongs sounded louder now and the phantoms began to dance, keeping
their feet motionless, executing a kind of rhythmic movement of the
stomach with twistings of the wrists. Always the same set smile, the
same white mask of death. It seemed that the only life there was in them
was concentrated in their rounded hips and arched stomachs which moved
with lascivious wrigglings; and in the rigid arms, the disturbing
outspread hands which writhed unceasingly.
Le Hello who, for some time past, had been asleep on the floor, hearing
the loud sounding of the gongs, woke up, startled.
"Why, you fool, it's the dancing-girls!" explained Barrada, jeering,
laughing at him.
"Oh! yes! the dancing-girls!"
He got up and with his large paw, which groped in the air, uncertain, he
tried to beat down these upraised arms and these gilded claws,
stuttering, thick-voiced.
"It's not good, you white faced guy, it's not good to move your hands
like that, it's vulgar. . . . I think it's . . . I think it's . . .
damnation!" And he sank to the floor again and went to sleep.
Barrada, who also this evening had drunk more than was usual with him,
reproached them for their yellow skin and told them about his, which was
white. "White! White! White!" He insisted over and over again on this
whiteness, which as a matter of fact he much exaggerated, and proceeded
presently to show it to them. First his arm, then his chest. "Look!" he
said. "Is it not true?"
The little yellow dolls of Asia continued their slow, lugubrious,
beast-like wrigglings, preserving always the mystery of their rictus and
of their white elongated eyes. And now Barrada, completely nude, was
dancing before them, looking like a Greek marble which had suddenly
taken life for some ancient bacchanal.
But the Burmese ladies, wound up like automata, danced on and on for
long after he was tired. And presently, when all was over and the gongs
were silent, the sailors were seized with fear at the idea that these
women, paid for their pleasure, were waiting for them. One after another
they slunk away in the direction of the shore, not daring to approach
them.