iet
and obedient to discipline. He wore his open blue sailor-collar and
red-balled, flat, woollen cap, with a frank, fearless look, and was
noble and dignified in his sailor garb, with his free step and tall
figure, but at the bottom of his heart he was still the same innocent
boy as ever, and thinking of his dear old grandam.

One evening he had got tipsy together with some lads from his parts,
simply because it is the custom; and they had all returned to the
barracks together arm-in-arm, singing out as lustily as they could.

And one Sunday, too, they had all gone to the theatre, in the upper
galleries. A melodrama was being played, and the sailors, exasperated
against the villain, greeted him with a howl, which they all roared
together, like a blast of the Atlantic cyclones.

CHAPTER VI--ORDERED ON FOREIGN SERVICE

One day Sylvestre was summoned before the officer of his company; and
they told him he was among those ordered out to China--in the squadron
for Formosa. He had been pretty well expecting it for some time, as he
had heard those who read the papers say that out there the war seemed
never-ending.

And because of the urgency of the departure, he was informed at the same
time that he would not be able to have the customary leave for his home
farewells; in five days' time he would have to pack up and be off.

Then a bitter pain came over him; though charmed at the idea of far-off
travels amid the unknown and of the war. There also was agony at the
thought of leaving all he knew and loved, with the vague apprehension
that he might never more return.

A thousand noises rang in his head. Around was the bustle of the
barrack-rooms, where hundreds of others were called up, like himself,
chosen for the Chinese squadron. And rapidly he wrote to his old
grandmother, with a stump of pencil, crouching on the floor, alone in
his own feverish dream, though in the thick of the continual hurry and
hubbub amidst all the young sailors hurried away like himself.

CHAPTER VII--MOAN'S SWEETHEART

"His sweetheart's a trifle old!" said the others, a couple of days
later, as they laughed after Sylvestre and his grandmother, "but they
seem to get on fine together all the same."

It amused them to see the boy, for the first time, walk through the
streets of Recouvrance, with a woman at his side, like the rest of them;
and, bending towards her with a tender look, whisper what seemed to be
very soft nothings.

She