About midnight, when this arduous watch was over, I went to bed, sending to Yves a blanket and a cloak. (For the nights already were cold.) And this in my helplessness was all that I could now do for him.
[CHAPTER XXXIII]
The next day, a Monday, the Commander sent for me early, and I entered his room with a feeling of resentment in my heart, with bitter words ready on my lips, which I would have uttered at the outset in revenge for my supplications of yesterday, if I had not feared to aggravate Yves' lot.
I was mistaken, however: he had been touched the previous night and had understood me.
"You may go to your friend. Give him a good talking to, but say that I pardon him. The affair will go no farther and will be put right by a simple disciplinary punishment. He will remain eight days in irons, and that will be all. I inflict on the three petty officers, at your instance, the equivalent punishment of eight days' close arrest. I do this for you, who look upon him as a brother, and for his sake also, for, after all, he is the best man we have on board."
And I went away with feelings very different from those with which I had come, regarding him indeed with gratitude and affection.
[CHAPTER XXXIV]
A corner of the hold of the Médée, in all the disarray of laying up. A lantern illumines a vast medley of heterogeneous objects more or less nibbled by rats.
A dozen or so sailors—Barrada, Guiaberry, Barazère, Le Hello, all the little band of friends—are grouped about a man lying on the floor. It is Yves in irons, stretched on the damp boards, his head supported on his elbow, his foot in the padlocked ring of the "bar of justice."
The most implacable of his three enemies. Petty Officer Lagatut, stands before him, threatening him in his old drunken voice. He threatens him with revenge for that affair of the cutter, in which, to his mind, I had taken too large a part.