No, Yves has not deserted, for the ship he is on is the warship _Primauguet._ He has not deserted, for he is still with me, and when he announced from aloft the approach of the reefs it was I who climbed up to him in his top, to reconnoitre with him. At Brest on that unhappy day when he had decided to leave us, I had seen him pass in common seaman's garb, carrying his sailor's kit so neatly folded in a handkerchief, and I had followed him at a distance as far as Recouvrance. I had let Marie enter and then I had entered too, after them; and as he came out he had found me waiting outside his door, barring his passage with my outspread arms--as, once before, at Toulven. Only this time it was not merely a matter of checking a childish caprice; I was about to engage in a supreme struggle with him. And long and cruel the struggle was, and there was a moment when I almost lost heart and abandoned him to the gloomy destiny which was carrying him away. And then, abruptly, it had ended. Tears came to save him, tears that had been wanting to come for the last two days--but could not, so little used were his eyes to this form of weakness. Then we put little Pierre, who had just awakened, on his knee; his little Pierre bore him no ill-will at all, but put his arms straightway round his neck. And Yves, at last, had said to me: "Very well, brother, I will do anything you tell me to do. But, no matter what, you must see now that I am done for. . . ." His case was indeed very serious and I did not know myself what course to take: it was a sort of rebellion, to have escaped from the ship after having been sentenced to irons, and then to have absented himself for three days! I had been tempted to say to them, after I had made them embrace: "Desert both of you, all three of you, my dear friends; for it is too late now to do anything better. Let Yves go away on the _Belle-Rose_ and do you go and join him in America." But no, that was too desperate a remedy, to abandon for ever their Breton land, and the little house at Toulven, and their old parents! So, trembling a little at my responsibility, I had taken the contrary decision: to return that very evening the advance already received, to free Yves from the hands of this Captain Kerjean, and, when morning came, as soon as the port should open, to hand him over to the naval authorities. Anxious days had followed, days of applications and of waiting, and at last, with much leniency and kindness, the matter had been settled in this way: a month in irons and six months' suspension from the rating of petty officer, with return to the pay of a simple sailor. That is how my poor Yves, embarked once more with me on this _Primauguet_, finds himself back in the crow's nest, again a topman as before, and performing the rough work he knew of old.