"Dear wife, this reminds me that it is only six months since we parted, and that it will be a long time yet before we see each other again. But I assure you that I should dearly love to be back for a time at Toulven, to give you a hand in getting our house ready; and yet, it is not simply for that, you know, but above all, to spend some time with you, and to see our little Pierre running about. They will have to give me a long leave when we return, at least fifteen or twenty days; indeed I do not think twenty will be enough and I shall ask for as many as thirty. "Dear Marie, I can tell you, however, that I am very happy on board, especially because I have been able to embark with M. Pierre. It is what I had hoped for for a very long time. It has been a very fine voyage and a very economical one for me who have need to save a lot of money as you know. Perhaps I may get another promotion before we disembark, seeing that I am on very good terms with all the officers. "I have also to tell you that the flying fish . . ." Crack! On deck someone whistles: "Aloft everyone!" Yves hurries away; and no one has ever heard the end of the story of the flying fish. He has preserved with his wife his childlike manner of being and writing. With me, he is changed, he has become a new Yves, more complex, more sophisticated than the Yves of old. CHAPTER LXXXIV The night which follows is clear and exquisite. We are moving very slowly, in the Coral sea, before a light, warm breeze, advancing with precaution, in fear of encountering white islands, listening to the silence, in fear of hearing the murmur of reefs. From midnight to four o'clock in the morning, the time of the watch has passed in vigil, amid the great, strange peace of the southern waters. Everything is of a blue-green, of a blue of night, of a colour of infinite depth; the moon, which at first sails high in the heaven, throws little flickering reflections on the sea, as if everywhere, on the immense empty plain, mysterious hands were agitating silently thousands of little mirrors. The half-hours pass one after another, undisturbed, the breeze steady, the sails very lightly stretched. The sailors of the watch, in their linen clothes, are asleep on the bare deck, in rows, all on the same side, fitted in one with another, like rows of white mummies. At each half-hour a bell rings, startlingly; and two voices come from the bow of the ship, singing out one after the other, in a kind of slow rhythm: "Keep a look out on the port bow!" says one. "Keep a look out on the starboard bow!" replies the other. The noise is surprising, producing the impression of a formidable clamour in all this silence; and then the vibrations of the voices and of the bell die away and there is no longer a sound. Meanwhile the moon is slowly sinking and its blue light grows wan; it is much nearer the water now and its reflection in it makes a long trail of light.