That he should have fallen like a senseless brute on his little son and injured his poor little forehead! He became to himself a miserable, repulsive thing at the thought of it. He began to break with his hands the sides of a wooden box which lay near him, and under his breath, after an instinctive glance round to see that he was alone, he called himself, with a bitter, mocking smile, vile names such as sailors use. Now he was on his feet, looking determined and dangerous. To desert! If he could join some ship and get away at once! There should be one in the docks; in fact that day there were many. Yes, he would desert at any price and disappear for ever! His decision had been taken with an implacable resolve. He walked towards where the ships lay, his shoulders well back, his head high, the Breton self-will in his half-closed eyes, in his frowning brows. He said to himself: "I am worthless, I know it, I always knew it, and they had far better let me go my ways. I have done my best, but I am what I am and it is not my fault." And he was right perhaps: _it was not his fault._ As he was now he was not responsible; he yielded to mysterious influences which had their origin in the remote past and came to him with his blood; he was a victim of the law of heredity working through a whole family, a whole race. CHAPTER LXXX At two o'clock on this same day on which he had concluded his bargain with Captain Kerjean, Yves, having bought some ordinary seaman's clothes, and changed clandestinely in a tavern on the quay, went on board the _Belle-Rose._ He went all over the ship, which was badly kept and had aspects of primitive roughness, but which nevertheless seemed a stout and handy vessel, built for speed and the hazards of the sea. Compared with the ships of the navy it looked small, short, and, above all, empty; an air of abandonment with scarce a soul on board; even at anchor this kind of solitude struck a chill to the heart. Three or four rough-looking seamen lounged about the deck; they composed the whole crew, and were about to become, for some years perhaps, Yves' only companions. They began by staring at one another before speaking. Throughout the day the fine weather continued, warm and peaceful; a sort of melancholy summer persisting into the autumn and bringing with it a kind of tranquillity. And on Yves, too, his decision irrevocably taken, a calm descended. They showed him his little locker, but he had scarcely anything to put in it. He washed himself in cold water, adjusted his new clothes, with an air of something like vanity; he wore no longer the livery of the state which he had often found so irksome; he felt at ease, freed from all the bonds of the past, almost as much as by death itself. He began to rejoice in his independence.