_August 23rd_.
The prolonged stay of the _Triomphante_ in the dock, and the distance
of our home from town, have been my pretext these last two or three
days for not going up to Diou-djen-dji to see Chrysanthème.
It is dreary work though in these docks. With the early dawn a legion
of little Japanese workmen invade us, bringing their dinners in
baskets and gourds like the working-men in our arsenals, but with a
needy, shabby appearance, and a ferreting, hurried manner which
reminds one of rats. Silently they slip under the keel, at the bottom
of the hold, in all the holes, sawing, nailing, repairing.
The heat is intense in this spot, overshadowed by the rocks and
tangled masses of foliage.
At two o'clock, in the broad sunlight, we have a new and far prettier
kind of invasion: that of the beetles and butterflies.
Butterflies as wonderful as those on the fans. Some all black, giddily
dash up against us, so light and airy that they seem merely a pair of
quivering wings fastened together without any body.
Yves astonished, gazes at them, saying in his boyish manner: "Oh, I
saw such a big one just now, such a big one, it quite frightened me; I
thought it was a bat attacking me."
A steersman who has captured a very curious specimen, carries it off
carefully to press between the leaves of his signal-book, like a
flower. Another sailor passing by, taking his small roast to the oven
in a mess-bowl, looks at him funnily and says:
"You had much better give it to me. I'd cook it!"