"And on French leave, I bet?"
"Yes, Monsieur Kerjean."
So much indeed might have been guessed from his appearance.
"And so, I understand you are married, Yves? Someone from Paimpol, that big fellow Lisbatz, I think, told me you were a family man."
Yves shrugged his shoulders with a movement of bad-tempered carelessness, and said:
"If you are looking for men. Monsieur Kerjean . . . it will suit me very well to join your ship."
It was not the first time that this Captain Kerjean had enrolled a deserter. He understood. He knew how to take them and afterwards how to manage them. His ship, la Belle-Rose, which sailed under the American flag, was leaving on the following day for California. Yves was acceptable to him; he was indeed an excellent acquisition to a crew such as his.
The two moved aside and discussed, in a low voice, their treaty of alliance.
This took place in the Mercantile docks, on the morning of the second day after he had left his home.
The day before he had been to Recouvrance, skirting the walls, in an attempt to get news of his little Pierre. From a distance, he had seen him looking out of the window at the people passing below, with a little bandage round his head. And then he had returned on his tracks, sufficiently reassured, in the half-muddled condition of drunkenness in which he still was; he had returned on his tracks to "go and find his friends."