I had sometimes thought that we might come across this brother Goulven, on one of these whaling boats which we found, now and then, in the anchorages of the southern seas, and which we "spoke" to when we did not like their look.
I went straight to him, without worrying about the captain, who was a huge American, headed like a pirate, with a long, thick, seaweed-like beard. I entered there as on conquered territory and etiquette mattered little to me.
"So it's you, Goulven Kermadec?"
And I advanced towards him holding out my hand, so sure was I of his identity.
But he, for his part, paled under his tan, and shrank back. He was afraid.
And I saw him, in an instinct of uncivilized man, clenching his fists, stiffening his muscles, as if prepared to resist to the utmost, in a desperate struggle.
Poor Goulven! The surprise of hearing me call him by his name—and then my uniform—and the sixteen armed sailors who accompanied me, had been too much for him. He thought that I had come in the name of the law of France, to seize him, and, like Yves, he became exasperated under the threat of force.
It took a minute or two to reassure him; and then when he was persuaded that his little brother had become mine, and that he was hard by, on the warship from which I had come, he asked my pardon for his fear with the same frank smile I knew so well in Yves.
It was a singular looking crew. The boat itself had the movements and the appearance of a pirate-ship. Licked and fretted by the sea, during the three years in which it had wandered in the swell of the great ocean without having once touched any civilized country, but solid still, and built for the seas' highways. In its shrouds, from bottom to top, on each ratline, hung whale's fins, looking like long dark fringes. One would have said that it had passed under the water and become covered with seaweed.
Within, it was laden with the fats and oils from the bodies of all the great beasts which they had slain. There was enough there to make a small fortune, and the captain was reckoning on returning shortly to America, to California where his home was.