"Very well, then, I will bring him to you. When he comes, all I ask of you is that you will advise him to be steady. You understand . . . Goulven?" It was he then who took my hand and pressed it in his. CHAPTER LXXXVI I had accepted an invitation to dinner on the following day with the captain of the whaler. We had got on famously together. His manners were not those of polite society, but there was nothing vulgar or commonplace about him. And besides it was the only way in which I could get Yves on board his ship. I half expected on the following morning, at daybreak, to find that the whaler had disappeared, flown during the night like a wild bird. But no; there it was in its position off-shore, with all its black fringes in its shrouds, standing out against the great circular mirror of the waters; which, on that morning, were motionless, and heavy, and gleaming, like coulées of silver. The invitation was seriously meant, therefore, and they were waiting for me. As a precaution, the captain had decided that the crew of the cutter which took me should be armed and should remain with me throughout. This fitted in admirably so far as Yves was concerned, and I took him with me as coxswain. CHAPTER LXXXVII The captain received me on his quarter-deck, dressed in reasonably correct American fashion; the _chola_, transformed, wore a red silk dress with a magnificent collar of pearls collected on the Pomoto islands; I was struck by her good looks and her perfect figure. We repair together to the room of the formidable iron-barred walls. It is dark and gloomy there; but, through the little deep-set windows, we see the splendour of what look like enchanted things: a sea of a milky blue, and with the polish of a turquoise, a distant island, of a purple iris colour, and a multitude of little orange-tinted clouds floating in a golden green sky. Afterwards when we turn our eyes from these little open windows, from the contemplation of all this light, the low-pitched cabin seems stranger than before, with its irregular shape and its massive beams, its arsenal of revolvers, of knuckle-dusters, leather thongs and whips. The dinner consists of tinned foods from San Francisco, exquisite fruits from the Isle of Tonga-Taboo, needle-fish, slim little inhabitants of the warm seas; and we drink French wines, Peruvian _pisco_ and English liqueurs. The Chinaman who waits upon us wears a silk robe of episcopal violet and slippers with thick paper soles. The _chola_ sings a _zamacuéca_ of Chile, playing, on a _diguhela_, a sort of accompaniment which sounds like the monotonous little clatter of a trotting mule. The doors of the fortress are wide open. Thanks to the presence of my sixteen armed men, a sense of security reigns, a peaceful intimacy, which are really very touching.