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.