These nights were indeed exquisite summer nights, mild, infinitely mild, milder than the mildest of our nights of June. And they troubled a little all these men, the eldest of whom was not yet thirty years of age.
The warm darkness brought thoughts of love which were not of their seeking. There were moments when they came near to weakening again in a troubling dream; they felt the need of opening their arms to some desired human form, of clasping it with a strong and forceful infinite tenderness. But no, no one, nothing. . . . It was necessary to pull themselves together, to remain alone, to turn over on the hard planks of the wooden deck, and to think of something else, to begin to sing again. . . . And then the songs, merry or sad, rang out more strongly than before, in the emptiness of the sea.
Nevertheless it was very pleasant on this forecastle during these evenings at sea. The fresh wind of the night blew in our faces, the virgin breezes which had never passed over land, which bore no living effluvium, which were without odour. Lying there, one lost little by little all notion of time and place, all notion of everything but speed, which is always a pleasing thing, even when you are without a goal and know not whither you are going.
They had no goal, these sailors, and they knew not whither they were going. What did it matter anyhow since nowhere were they allowed to set foot on shore? They were ignorant of the direction of this rapid course and of the infinite extent of the solitudes in which they were; but it amused them, nevertheless, to be going full speed ahead in the bluish darkness, to feel that they were moving very rapidly. As they sang their evening songs, their eyes were on the bowsprit, ever thrusting forward, with its two little horns and shape of drawn cross bow, which leapt over the sea, skimming the noisy waters in the lightsome fashion of a flying fish.
[CHAPTER XCIII]
On the Primauguet, my dear Yves was above reproach, as he had promised us. The officers treated him with a rather special consideration on account of his general bearing and manner which were no longer those of the others. But he remained, nevertheless, in the first rank of that hardy band of which the chief boatswain said with pride:
"It is half shark; it knows no fear."
He had resumed his old-time habit of coming, silent-footed, to my room in the evening, in the hours when I abandoned it to him. He would settle down to read my letters and my papers, knowing well that he was at liberty to look at them all; he learnt to understand the marine charts, and amused himself by marking points on them and measuring distances. Very often he used to write to his wife, and it happened that his little letters, interrupted by a call aloft, remained mixed with my papers. I found one one day which was intended no doubt to be placed in a second envelope and on which he had put this quaint address:
"To Madame Marie Kermadec, c/o her parents, at Trémeulé in Toulven, Country of Brittany, Commune of Wolves, Parish of Squirrels, on the right, under the largest oak."
It was hard to imagine my great big Yves writing these childish things.