The Médée had been homeward bound for many a day.
Wind and current had favoured her. She sailed rapidly, so rapidly, for days and nights on end, that one lost the notion of places and distances. Vaguely we had seen pass the Straits of Malacca, taken in our course; the Red Sea, ascended under steam in a blaze of sunlight; then the point of Sicily, and at last the great couchant lion of Gibraltar. Now we are watching the horizon and the first land, which may appear at any moment, will be the land of Brittany.
I had joined the Médée only during the latter part of the voyage and, this time, my tour with Yves will have lasted less than five months.
Amid the grey expanse little white lines now appear; then a tower with dark little islets scattered about: all this still very distant and scarcely visible in the dull wan daylight which envelopes us.
We might imagine without any trouble that we were still at the other side of the world, in that extreme Asia which we have lately left; for things on board have not changed, nor faces either. We are still encumbered with Chinese knick-knacks; we continue to eat fruits gathered on the other side and still green; we carry with us odours, savours of China.
But no; our house has been translated very quickly; this tower and these islets are the Pierres-Noires; Brest is there, quite near us, and before night we shall have anchored there.
Always an emotion of remembrance, when this great roadstead of Brest appears, imposing and solemn, and these great sailing ships which one rarely sees elsewhere. All my first impressions of the navy, all my first impressions of Brittany—and then, too, it is France.
There is the Borda beyond; as I look at it, I can see again in my mind's eye the desk over which I have pored in long hours of study; and the blackboard on which I wrote feverishly, before the examination, the complicated formulæ of mechanics and astronomy.
Yves at that time was a small boy with a very serious and thoughtful air, a little round-faced Breton apprentice, who dwelt in the near-lying ship, the Bretagne, the neighbour and companion of the Borda. We were children then—to-day we are grown men—to-morrow . . . old age—the day after, death.