One day Sylvestre was summoned before the officer of his company; and they told him he was among those ordered out to China--in the squadron for Formosa. He had been pretty well expecting it for some time, as he had heard those who read the papers say that out there the war seemed never-ending.

And because of the urgency of the departure, he was informed at the same time that he would not be able to have the customary leave for his home farewells; in five days' time he would have to pack up and be off.

Then a bitter pain came over him; though charmed at the idea of far-off travels amid the unknown and of the war. There also was agony at the thought of leaving all he knew and loved, with the vague apprehension that he might never more return.

A thousand noises rang in his head. Around was the bustle of the barrack-rooms, where hundreds of others were called up, like himself, chosen for the Chinese squadron. And rapidly he wrote to his old grandmother, with a stump of pencil, crouching on the floor, alone in his own feverish dream, though in the thick of the continual hurry and hubbub amidst all the young sailors hurried away like himself.

CHAPTER VII--MOAN'S SWEETHEART

"His sweetheart's a trifle old!" said the others, a couple of days later, as they laughed after Sylvestre and his grandmother, "but they seem to get on fine together all the same."

It amused them to see the boy, for the first time, walk through the streets of Recouvrance, with a woman at his side, like the rest of them; and, bending towards her with a tender look, whisper what seemed to be very soft nothings.

She was a very quick, diminutive person seen from behind, with rather short skirts for the fashion of the day; and a scanty brown shawl, and a high Paimpol _coiffe_. She, too, hanging on his arm, turned towards him with an affectionate glance.

"A trifle old was his sweetheart!"

That's what the others called after him, we say, but without spite, for any one could see that she was his old granny, come up from the country.

She had come, too, in a hurry, suddenly terrified at the news of his sudden departure; for this Chinese war had already cost Paimpol many sailors. So she had sc.r.a.ped together all her poor little savings, put her best Sunday dress and a fresh clean _coiffe_ in a box, and had set out to kiss him once again.

She had gone straight to the barracks to ask for him; at first his adjutant had refused to let him go out.

"If you've anything to say, my good woman, go and speak to the captain yourself. There he is, pa.s.sing."

So she calmly walked up to him, and he allowed himself to be won over.

"Send Moan to change his clothes, to go out," said he.

All in hot haste Moan had gone to rig up in his best attire, while the good old lady, to make him laugh, of course, made a most inimitably droll face and a mock curtsey at the adjutant behind his back.

But when the grandson appeared in his full uniform, with the inevitable turned-down collar, leaving his throat bare, she was quite struck with his beauty; his black beard was cut into a seamanly fashionable point by the barber, and his cap was decked out with long floating ribbons, with a golden anchor at each end. For the moment she almost saw in him her son Pierre, who, twenty years before, had also been a sailor in the navy, and the remembrance of the far past, with all its dead, stealthily shadowed the present hour.

But the sadness soon pa.s.sed away. Arm-in-arm they strolled on, happy to be together; and it was then that the others had pretended to see in her his sweetheart, and voted her "a trifle old."

She had taken him, for a treat, to dine in an inn kept by some people from Paimpol, which had been recommended to her as rather cheap. And then, still arm-in-arm, they had sauntered through Brest, looking at the shop-windows. There never were such funny stories told as those she told her grandson to make him laugh; of course all in Paimpol Breton, so that the pa.s.sers-by might not understand.

CHAPTER VIII--OLD AND YOUNG

She stayed three days with him, three happy days, though over them hung a dark and ominous forecast; one might as well call them three days of respite.

At last she was forced to return to Ploubazlanec, for she had come to the end of her little savings, and Sylvestre was to embark the day afterward. The sailors are always inexorably kept in barracks the day before foreign cruises (a custom that seems rather barbarous at first, but which is a necessary precaution against the "flings" they would have before leaving definitely).

Oh that last day! She had done her very best to hatch up some more funny stories in her head, to tell her boy just at the parting; but she had remembered nothing--no; only tears had welled up, and at every moment sobs choked her. Hanging on his arm, she reminded him of a thousand things he was not to forget to do, and he also tried hard to repress his tears. They had ended by going into a church to say their prayers together.

It was by the night train that she went. To save a few pence, they had gone on foot to the station; he carrying her box, and holding her on his strong arm, upon which she weighed heavily.

She was so very, very tired--poor old lady! She had scarcely any strength left after the exertion of the last three or four days. Her shoulders were bent under her brown shawl, and she had no force to bear herself up; her youngish look was gone, and she felt the weight of her seventy-six years.

Oh! how her heart ached at the thought that it was all over, and that in a few moments she must leave him! Was he really to go out so far, to China, perhaps to slaughter. She still had him there with her, quite close, her poor hands could yet grasp him--and yet he must go; all the strength of her will, all her tears, and all her great heartrending despair--all! would nothing be of avail to keep him back?

With her ticket, and her lunch-basket, and her mittens in her grasp, agitated, she gave him her last blessing and advice, and he answered her with an obedient "Ay, ay," bending his head tenderly towards her and gazing lovingly at her, in his soft childish way.

"Now then, old lady, you must make up your mind plaguey quick if you want to go by this train!"

The engine whistled. Suddenly terrified at the idea of losing the train, she bore her box from Sylvestre's grasp, and flinging it down, threw her arms round his neck in a last and supreme embrace.

Many people on the platform stared at them, but not one smiled. Hustled about by the porters, worn out and full of pain, she pressed into the first carriage near; the door was banged quickly upon her, while Sylvestre, with all the speed of a young sailor, rushed out of the station to the rails beside the line to see the train pa.s.s.

A shrill screeching whistle, a noisy grinding of the wheels, and his grandmother pa.s.sed away, leaving him leaning against the gate and swinging up his cap with its flying ribbons, while she, hanging out of the window of her third-cla.s.s carriage, made an answering signal with her handkerchief; and for as long as she could see the dark blue-clad figure, that was her child, followed him with her eyes, throwing her whole soul into that "good-bye!" kept back to the last, and always uncertain of realization when sailors are concerned.

Look long at your little Sylvestre, poor old woman; until the very latest moment, do not lose sight of his fleeting shadow, which is fading away for ever.

When she could see him no longer, she fell back, completely crushing her still clean unrumpled cap, weeping and sobbing in the agony of death itself.

He had turned away slowly, with his head bent, and big tears falling down his cheeks. The autumn night had closed in; everywhere the gas was flaring, and the sailors' riotous feasts had begun anew. Paying no heed to anything about him, he pa.s.sed through Brest and over the Recouvrance Bridge, to the barracks.

"Whist! here, you darling boy!" called out some nocturnal prowlers to him; but he pa.s.sed on, and entering the barracks, flung himself down in his hammock, weeping, all alone, and hardly sleeping until dawn.

CHAPTER IX--THE EASTERN VOYAGE

Sylvestre was soon out on the ocean, rapidly whisked away over the unknown seas, far more blue than Iceland's. The ship that carried him off to the confines of Asia was ordered to go at full speed and stop nowhere. Ere long he felt that he was far away, for the speed was unceasing, and even without a care for the sea or the wind. As he was a topman, he lived perched aloft, like a bird, avoiding the soldiers crowded upon the deck.

Twice they stopped, however, on the coast of Tunis, to take up more Zouaves and mules; from afar he had perceived the white cities amid sands and arid hills. He had even come down from his top to look at the dark-brown men draped in their white robes who came off in small boats to peddle fruit; his mates told him that these were Bedouins.

The heat and the sun, which were unlessened by the autumn season, made him feel out of his element.

One day they touched at Port Said. All the flags of Europe waved overhead from long staves, which gave it an aspect of Babel on a feast-day, and the glistening sands surrounded the town like a moving sea.

They had stopped there, touching the quays, almost in the midst of the long streets full of wooden shanties. Since his departure, Sylvestre never had seen the outside world so closely, and the movement and numbers of boats excited and amused him.

With never-ending screeching from their escape-pipes, all these boats crowded up in the long ca.n.a.l, as narrow as a ditch, which wound itself in a silvery line through the infinite sands. From his post on high he could see them as in a procession under a window, till disappearing in the plain.

On the ca.n.a.l all kinds of costumes could be seen; men in many-coloured attire, busy and shouting like thunder. And at night the clamour of confused bands of music mingled with the diabolical screams of the locomotives, playing noisy tunes, as if to drown the heart-breaking sorrow of the exiles who for ever pa.s.sed onward.

The next day, at sunrise, they, too, glided into the narrow ribbon of water between the sands. For two days the steaming in the long file through the desert lasted, then another sea opened before them, and they were once again upon the open. They still ran at full speed through this warmer expanse, stained like red marble, with their boiling wake like blood. Sylvestre remained all the time up in his top, where he would hum his old song of "Jean-Francois de Nantes," to remind him of his dear brother Yann, of Iceland, and the good old bygone days.

Sometimes, in the depths of the shadowy distance, some wonderfully tinted mountain would arise. Notwithstanding the distance and the dimness around, the names of those projected capes of countries appeared as the eternal landmarks on the great roadways of the earth to the steersmen of this vessel; but a topman is carried on like an inanimate thing, knowing nothing, and unconscious of the distance over the everlasting, endless waves.

All he felt was a terrible estrangement from the things of this world, which grew greater and greater; and the feeling was very defined and exact as he looked upon the seething foam behind, and tried to remember how long had lasted this pace that never slackened night or day. Down on deck, the crowd of men, huddled together in the shadow of the awnings, panted with weariness. The water and the air, even the very light above, had a dull, crushing splendour; and the fadeless glory of those elements were as a very mockery of the human beings whose physical lives are so ephemeral.

Once, up in his crow's nest, he was gladdened by the sight of flocks of tiny birds, of an unknown species, which fell upon the ship like a whirlwind of coal dust. They allowed themselves to be taken and stroked, being worn out with fatigue. All the sailors had them as pets upon their shoulders. But soon the most exhausted among them began to die, and before long they died by thousands on the rigging, yards, ports, and sails--poor little things!--under the blasting sun of the Red Sea.

They had come to destruction, off the Great Desert, fleeing before a sandstorm. And through fear of falling into the blue waters that stretched on all sides, they had ended their last feeble flight upon the pa.s.sing ship. Over yonder, in some distant region of Libya, they had been fledged in ma.s.ses. Indeed, there were so many of them, that their blind and unkind mother, Nature, had driven away before her this surplus, as unmoved as if they had been superabundant men. On the scorching funnels and ironwork of the ship they died away; the deck was strewn with their puny forms, only yesterday so full of life, songs, and love. Now, poor little black dots, Sylvestre and the others picked them up, spreading out their delicate blue wings, with a look of pity, and swept them overboard into the abysmal sea.