I
Having left Havre on May 3, 1882, for a voyage in Chinese waters, the three-masted sailing-ship Notre-Dame-des-Vents reentered Marseilles harbour on August 8, 1886, after a four years’ voyage. She had discharged her original cargo in the Chinese port to which she had been chartered, and had there and then picked up a new freight for Buenos Aires, and from thence had shipped cargo for Brazil.
Various other voyages, not to speak of damages, repairs, several months spent becalmed, storms that blew her out of her course, and all the accidents, adventures and misadventures of the sea, had detained far from her land this three-masted Norman boat now returned to Marseilles with a hold full of tin boxes containing American preserved foods.
At the beginning of the voyage she had on board, besides the captain and the mate, fourteen sailors, eight Normans and six Bretons. At the end only five Bretons and four Normans remained; the Breton had died at sea; the four Normans, who had disappeared in various circumstances, had been replaced by two Americans, a nigger and a Norwegian shanghaied one evening in a Singapore den.
The great ship, sails furled, yards forming a cross with mast stem, drawn by a Marseilles tug that panted along before her, rolled in a slight swell that died gently away in the calm waters behind her; she passed in front of the Château d’If, then under all the grey rocks of the roadstead over which the setting sun flung a reek of gold, and entered the old harbour where, ship lying by ship alongside the quays, were gathered ships from all corners of the globe, huddled together, large and small, of all shapes and riggings, like a fish-soup of boats in this too confined basin, full of foul water, where the hulls grazed and rubbed against each other, for all the world as if they were pickled in saltwater liquor.
Notre-Dame-des-Vents took her place between an Italian brig and an English schooner which drew apart to make way for their comrade; then, when all the formalities of customs and harbour had been complied with, the captain gave two-thirds of his crew shore leave for the evening.
It was already night. The lights of Marseilles were lit. In the warmth of the summer evening, an odour of garlic-flavoured cooking hung over the noisy city, alive with the sound of voices, rumblings, clatterings, all the gaiety of the South.
As soon as they felt land under them, the ten men who had been tossed for months on the sea, began to walk very carefully, with hesitant steps like creatures strayed out of their element, unaccustomed to cities, two by two in a procession.
They rolled along, taking their bearings, following the scent down the by-streets that opened on to the harbour, their blood on fire with a hunger for love that had grown stronger and stronger in their bodies throughout their last sixty-six days at sea. The Normans marched ahead, led by Célestin Duclos, a tall shrewd sturdy young fellow, who captained the others whenever they set foot on shore. He found out the best places, devised ways and means to his liking, and refrained from risking himself too readily in the brawls so common between sailors on shore. But when he did get involved in one, he was absolutely fearless.
After hesitating some little time between the obscure streets that ran down to the sea like sewers, from which rose a heavy smell, as it were the very breath of hovels, Célestin decided on a sort of winding passage where lighted lamps, bearing enormous numbers on their frosted coloured glass, were hung out above the doors. Under the narrow arch of the doorways, women in aprons, looking like servant-girls, and seated on rush-bottomed chairs, got up at their approach, made three steps to the edge of the stream that ran down the middle of the street and stood right across the path of the line of men that advanced slowly, singing and chuckling, excited already by the neighbourhood of these prostitutes’ cells.
Sometimes in the depths of a lobby a second door padded with brown leather opened abruptly and behind it appeared a stout half-naked woman, whose heavy thighs and plump arms were sharply outlined under a coarse tight-fitting shift of white cotton. Her short petticoat looked like a hooped girdle, and the soft flesh of her bosom, arms and shoulders made a rosy patch against a bodice of black velvet edged with gold lace. She called to them from far off: “Are you coming in, dearies?” and sometimes came out herself to clutch one of them, pulling him towards her doorway with all her might, clinging to him like a spider dragging in a body bigger than itself. The man, excited by her touch, resisted feebly, and the others halted to watch him, hesitating between their desire to go in without further delay and their desire to make this appetising stroll last a little longer. Then, when after the most exhausting effort the woman had dragged the sailor to the threshold of her abode, into which the whole company were about to plunge after him Célestin Duclos, who was a judge of such houses, would suddenly cry: “Don’t go in there, Marchand, it’s not the right one.”
Whereupon, obedient to this command, the man disengaged himself with brutal violence, and the friends fell again into line, pursued by the obscene abuse of the exasperated women while other women, all the way down the passage ahead of them, came out of their doors, attracted by the noise, and poured out hoarse-voiced enticing appeals. They went on their way, growing more and more excited, between the cajoling cries and seductive charms offered by the chorus of love’s doorkeepers down the length of the street before them, and the vile curses flung after them by the chorus behind, the despised chorus of disappointed women. Now and then they met other companies of men, soldiers marching along with swords clattering against their legs, more sailors, a solitary citizen or so, a few shop assistants. Everywhere opened other narrow streets, starred with evil beacon-lights. They walked steadily through this labyrinth of hovels on the greasy cobbled streets, oozing streams of foul water, between houses full of women’s flesh.
At last Duclos made up his mind and, halting in front of a fairly decent-looking house, marshalled his company into it.