Yann answered by snapping his thick fingers with a contemptuous look for the women folk.  He had just worked off his five years’ government naval service; and it was as master-gunner of the fleet that he had learned to speak good French and hold sceptical opinions.  He hemmed and hawed and then rattled off his latest love adventure, which had lasted a fortnight.

It happened in Nantes, a Free-and-Easy singer for the heroine.  One evening, returning from the waterside, being slightly tipsy, he had entered the music hall.  At the door stood a woman selling big bouquets at twenty francs apiece.  He had bought one without quite knowing what he should do with it, and before he was much more than in had thrown it with great force at the vocalist upon the stage, striking her full in the face, partly as a rough declaration of love, partly through disgust for the painted doll that was too pink for his taste.  The blow had felled the woman to the boards, and—­she worshipped him during the three following weeks.

“Why, bless ye, lads, when I left she made me this here present of a real gold watch.”

The better to show it them he threw it upon the table like a worthless toy.

This was told with coarse words and oratorical flourishes of his own.  Yet this commonplace of civilized life jarred sadly among such simple men, with the grand solemnity of the ocean around them; in the glimmering of midnight, falling from above, was an impression of the fleeting summers of the far north country.

These ways of Yann greatly pained and surprised Sylvestre.  He was a girlish boy, brought up in respect for holy things, by an old grandmother, the widow of a fisherman in the village of Ploubazlanec.  As a tiny child he used to go every day with her to kneel and tell his beads over his mother’s grave.  From the churchyard on the cliff the grey waters of the Channel, wherein his father had disappeared in a shipwreck, could be seen in the far distance.

As his grandmother and himself were poor he had to take to fishing in his early youth, and his childhood had been spent out on the open water.  Every night he said his prayers, and his eyes still wore their religious purity.  He was captivating though, and next to Yann the finest-built lad of the crew.  His voice was very soft, and its boyish tones contrasted markedly with his tall height and black beard; as he had shot up very rapidly he was almost puzzled to find himself grown suddenly so tall and big.  He expected to marry Yann’s sister soon, but never yet had answered any girl’s love advances.

There were only three sleeping bunks aboard, one being double-berthed, so they “turned in” alternately.

When they had finished their feast, celebrating the Assumption of their patron saint, it was a little past midnight.  Three of them crept away to bed in the small dark recesses that resembled coffin-shelves; and the three others went up on deck to get on with their often interrupted, heavy labour of fish-catching; the latter were Yann, Sylvestre, and one of their fellow-villagers known as Guillaume.