"This suits me as gaiters suit a rabbit," said Yves, with a boyish air, as he contemplated his pagoda sleeves and his blue robe of Burmese silk.
It was at Yé, a Siamese town, on the Bay of Bengal. He was sitting in the background of a sailors' tavern on a stool of Chinese design.
He was very drunk, and after he had smiled thus to see himself clothed in the fashion of a Chinese mandarin, his eyes became dull and lustreless, his lip curled and disdainful. At such moments there was nothing he might not do, as in his bad days of old.
By his side was big Kerboul, also a foresail topman, who had just had brought to him fifteen glasses of a very expensive Singapore liquor, and had drained them one after the other, breaking them afterwards with blows of his fist, in the deadly serious way characteristic of the drunken Breton. And the debris of these fifteen glasses covered the table on which now he had put his feet.
And Barrada, the gunner, was there too, handsome and calm as usual, smiling his feline smile. The topman had invited him, exceptionally, to their feast. And Le Hello also, and Barazère, and half a dozen others of the mainsail and four of the bow-sprit—all attitudinizing, with superb airs, in their Eastern robes.
And even Le Hir was there, a half-witted fellow from the island of Sein, whom they had brought as a laughing-stock, and who was drinking refuse mixed with his bowl of rum. And, to complete the tale, two sea-rovers, two blacklisted, deserters from every flag, old acquaintances of Yves', who had found them, that evening, on the beach and, out of kindness, brought them along.
It was to celebrate the feast of Saint Epissoire, the patron saint of the topmen, that they had foregathered here, and custom required that I should put in an appearance among them, as navigating officer.
For a year past they had not put foot on land. And the Commander, who was well satisfied with his crew, had permitted them, as being the most meritorious, to celebrate as in France the anniversary of their patron saint. He had selected this town of Yé, because it seemed to him the least dangerous for us, the people there being more inoffensive than elsewhere and more easily appeased.
In this room, which was large and low-pitched, with paper walls, there was, at the same time as us, a band of sailors from an American merchantship, who were drinking with sandy-haired, long-toothed women escaped from the brothels of British India.
And these intruders annoyed the topmen who wanted to be alone and let them see it.