A crowd of yellow men appeared, yelling out and pressing on deck, bringing coal in baskets.
"Already in China ?" asked Sylvestre, at the sight of those grotesque figures in pigtails.
"Bless you, no, not yet," they told him; "have a little more patience." It was only Singapore.

He went up into his mast-top again, to avoid the black dust tossed about by the breeze, while the coal was feverishly heaped up in the bunkers from little baskets.
One day, at length, they arrived off a land called Tourane, where the _Circe_ was anchored, to blockade the port.

This was the ship to which Sylvestre had been long ago assigned, and he was left there with his bag.
On board he met with two mates from home, Icelanders, who were captains of guns for the time being.

Through the long, hot, still evenings, when there was no work to be done, they clustered on deck apart from the others, to form together a little Brittany of remembrances.
Five months he passed there in inaction and exile, locked up in the cheerless bay, with the feverish desire to go out and fight and slay, for change's sake..