IN THE ROADSTEAD OF BREST,
23_rd December_, 1880.
A night in December, clear and cold; a great calm over the sea, a great
silence on board.
In a little ship's cabin, which is painted white and has iron walls,
Yves is sitting near me amid open trunks and cases. We are still in the
disarray of arrival; we have yet to instal ourselves, to make a little
home, in this iron box which presently is going to carry us through the
waves and storms of winter.
All the embarcations we had foreseen, all the long voyages we had
projected, had come to nothing. And I find myself simply on board this
_Sèvre_ which is not going to leave the Brittany coast. Yves is among
the crew and we shall be together again, in all human probability, for a
year. Given our calling it is a stroke of good luck; it might have
happened to us at any moment to be separated for ever. And Yves has very
gladly given a hundred francs out of his purse to the sailor who
consented to give up his place to him.
Let us make the best of this _Sèvre_, since fate will have it so. It
will remind us at any rate of the times already distant when we sailed
together over the misty northern sea under the protecting eye of the
Creizker tower.
But I should have liked it better if we had been sent elsewhere, to
somewhere in the sun; for Yves' sake especially, I should have preferred
to be going farther from Brest, farther from his evil companions and the
taverns of the coast.