As soon as the old cottage cuckoo had announced four o'clock in its cracked voice, quickly, we had to get up. We were due at Paimpol before daybreak, to catch there at six o'clock the diligence for Guincamp. At half-past four, on this cold winter's morning, the poor little door opened to let us out; it closed on a last kiss for Yves from his weeping mother, on a last handshake for me. We set off in the cold rain and the dark night, and for five years we saw them no more. That is what happens in the families of sailors. When we were half-way on our road we heard the Angelus sounding behind us at Plouherzel. We thought we were late and began to run. Our faces were bathed in perspiration when we reached Paimpol. But we had been mistaken; the hour of the Angelus had been put forward. We found a refuge in a tavern already open, where we had breakfast with some Icelanders and other seafaring folk. And on the night of the same day, at eleven o'clock, we arrived back in Brest to put to sea once more. CHAPTER XXIV I was aware that I had accepted a heavy responsibility in adopting this refractory brother, the more so because I took my oath very seriously. But fate separated us on the second day following, and soon we were half the world apart. Yves set sail for the Atlantic, and I left for the Levant, for Stamboul. It was not until fifteen months later, in May, 1877, that we met again on board the _Médée_, which was cruising between India and China. CHAPTER XXV On board the _Médée_, May, 1877. "This suits me as gaiters suit a rabbit," said Yves, with a boyish air, as he contemplated his pagoda sleeves and his blue robe of Burmese silk. It was at Yé, a Siamese town, on the Bay of Bengal. He was sitting in the background of a sailors' tavern on a stool of Chinese design. He was very drunk, and after he had smiled thus to see himself clothed in the fashion of a Chinese mandarin, his eyes became dull and lustreless, his lip curled and disdainful. At such moments there was nothing he might not do, as in his bad days of old. By his side was big Kerboul, also a foresail topman, who had just had brought to him fifteen glasses of a very expensive Singapore liquor, and had drained them one after the other, breaking them afterwards with blows of his fist, in the deadly serious way characteristic of the drunken Breton. And the debris of these fifteen glasses covered the table on which now he had put his feet. And Barrada, the gunner, was there too, handsome and calm as usual, smiling his feline smile. The topman had invited him, exceptionally, to their feast. And Le Hello also, and Barazère, and half a dozen others of the mainsail and four of the bow-sprit--all attitudinizing, with superb airs, in their Eastern robes.