And she went on to tell him all the new things which little Pierre had learnt to say and do; in very naïve terms, she told of her great love for the absent one; she enclosed a curl, cut from a certain little brown and very restless head; and put the whole in an envelope of thin paper which she superscribed thus:
"To Monsieur Kermadec, Yves, Leading Seaman on board the Primauguet, in the southern seas, c/o the French Consul at Panama, to be forwarded."
Poor little letter! Will it ever be delivered? Who can tell? It is not impossible, more unlikely things have happened. In five months, six months, travel-stained and covered with American postmarks, it will be delivered, perhaps, faithfully to Yves, and bring him the deep love of his wife and the brown curl of his son.
[CHAPTER LXXXIX]
May, 1882.
In the evening, in the southern solitudes. The wind was rising. Over all this moving immensity in which the Primauguet dwelt long dark blue waves were chasing one another. It was a damp wind and struck chill.
Below on the spar-deck, Le Hir the idiot was hastening, before darkness fell, to sew up a corpse in pieces of grey canvas which were the remains of sails.
Yves and Barrada, standing, were watching him with a kind of horror. They had perforce to remain close to him, in a very small mortuary chamber, which had been made by suspending other sails and which was guarded by a gunner, cutlass in hand.
It was Barazère who was being sewn up in these grey remnants. He had died of a disease contracted long before in Algiers—on a night of pleasure. . . . Many times he had believed himself cured; but the deadly poison remained in his blood, reappeared from time to time, and at last had killed him. Towards the end he had been covered with hideous sores and his friends had avoided him.
It fell to Le Hir to sew him up, for all the others had refused, out of fear of his malady. Le Hir had accepted on the strength of a promise of a pint of wine.