Hazel eyes, rather close together and very deep-set beneath the frontal bone, with the impassive expression of a regard turned inwards; the nose small and regular in shape; the lower lip protruding slightly as if in scorn.
The face immobile, marmorean, save in those rare moments when he smiles. Then the whole face is transformed, and one sees that Yves is very young. The smile itself is the smile of those who have suffered: it has a childlike gentleness and lights up the hardened features a little as the rays of the sun, falling by chance, light up the cliffs of Brittany.
When Yves appeared the other sailors who were there regarded him with good-humoured smiles and an unusual air of respect.
This was because he wore for the first time on his sleeve the two red stripes of a petty officer, which had just been awarded him. And on board ship a petty officer is a person of consequence. These poor woollen stripes, which, in the army, are given so quickly to the first comer, represent in the navy years of hardship; they represent the strength and the life of young men, expended at every hour of the day and night, high up in the crow's nest, that domain of the topmen which is shaken by all the winds of heaven.
The boatswain, coming up, held out his hand to Yves. Formerly he also had been a topmen inured to hardness, and he was a shrewd judge of strong and courageous men.
"Well, Kermadec," he said. "You are going to water those stripes of yours, I suppose?"
"Yes, bo'sun," replied Yves in a low voice, but preserving a grave and abstracted air.
It was not the rain from heaven that the old boatswain had in mind; for, as far as that went, the watering was assured. No, in the navy, to water your stripes means to get drunk in order to do them honour on the first day they are worn.
Yves remained thoughtful in the face of the necessity of this ceremony, because he had just sworn to me very solemnly that he would be sober, and he wanted to keep his promise.
And then he had had enough, at last, of these tavern scenes which had been repeated so many times in all the countries of the world. To spend one's nights in low pot-houses, at the head of the wildest and most drunken of the crew, and to be picked up in the gutter in the morning—one tires of these pleasures after a time, however good a sailor one may be. Besides the mornings following are painful and are always the same; and Yves knew that and wanted no more of them.