第 14 页

"Here's the cursed fog now, for sure," grumbled the men. They had long ago made the acquaintance of that compulsory companion of the second part of the fishing season; but it also announced its end and the time for returning to Brittany.

It condensed into fine, sparkling drops in their beards, and shone upon their weather-beaten faces. Looking athwart ship to one another, they appeared dim as ghosts; and by comparison, nearer objects were seen more clearly under the colourless light. They took care not to inhale the air too deeply, for a feeling of chill and wet penetrated the lungs.

But the fishing was going on briskly, so that they had no time left to chatter, and they only thought of their lines. Every moment big heavy fish were drawn in on deck, and slapped down with a smack like a whip- crack; there they wriggled about angrily, flapping their tails on the deck, scattering plenty of sea-water about, and silvery scales too, in the course of their death-struggle. The sailor who split them open with his long knife, sometimes cut his own fingers, in his haste, so that his warm blood mingled with the brine.

CHAPTER X THE WHITE FOG

Caught in the fog, they remained ten days in succession without being able to see anything. The fishing went on handsomely the while, and with so much to do there was no time for weariness. At regular intervals one of them blew a long fog-horn, whence issued a sound like the howling of a wild beast.

Sometimes, out of the depths of white fog, another bellowing answered their call. Then a sharper watch was kept. If the blasts were approaching, all ears were turned in the direction of that unknown neighbour, whom they might perhaps never see, but whose presence was nevertheless a danger. Conjectures were made about the strange vessel; it became a subject of conversation, a sort of company for them; all longing to see her, strained their eyes in vain efforts to pierce those impalpable white shrouds.

Then the mysterious consort would depart, the bellowing of her trumpet fading away in the distance, and they would remain again in the deep hush, amid the infinity of stagnant vapour. Everything was drenched with salt water; the cold became more penetrating; each day the sun took longer to sink below the horizon; there were now real nights one or two hours long, and their gray gloaming was chilly and weird.

Every morning they heaved the lead, through fear that the /Marie/ might have run too near the Icelandic coast. But all the lines on board, fastened end to end, were paid out in vain--the bottom could not be touched. So they knew that they were well out in blue water.

Life on board was rough and wholesome; the comfort in the snug strong oaken cabin below was enhanced by the impression of the piercing cold outside, when they went down to supper or for rest.

In the daytime, these men, who were as secluded as monks, spoke but little among themselves. Each held his line, remaining for hours and hours in the same immovable position. They were separated by some three yards of space, but it ended in not even seeing one another.

The calm of the fog dulled the mind. Fishing so lonely, they hummed home songs, so as not to scare the fish away. Ideas came more slowly and seldom; they seemed to expand, filling in the space of time, without leaving any vacuum. They dreamed of incoherent and mysterious things, as if in slumber, and the woof of their dreams was as airy as fog itself.

This misty month of August usually terminated the Iceland season, in a quiet, mournful way. Otherwise the full physical life was the same, filling the sailors' lungs with rustling air and hardening their already strong muscles.

Yann's usual manner had returned, as if his great grief had not continued; watchful and active, quick at his fishing work, a happy-go- lucky temper, like one who had no troubles; communicative at times, but very rarely--and always carrying his head up high, with his old indifferent, domineering look.

At supper in the rough retreat, when they were all seated at table, with their knives busy on their hot plates, he occasionally laughed out as he used to do at droll remarks of his mates. In his inner self he perhaps thought of Gaud, to whom, doubtless, Sylvestre had plighted him in his last hours; and she had become a poor girl now, alone in the world. And above all, perhaps, the mourning for his beloved brother still preyed upon his heart. But this heart of his was a virgin wilderness, difficult to explore and little known, where many things took place unrevealed on the exterior.

CHAPTER XI THE SPECTRE SHIP

One morning, going on three o'clock, while all were dreaming quietly under their winding-sheet of fog, they heard something like a clamour of voices--voices whose tones seemed strange and unfamiliar. Those on deck looked at each other questioningly.

"Who's that talking?"

Nobody. Nobody had said anything. For that matter, the sounds had seemed to come from the outer void. Then the man who had charge of the fog-horn, but had been neglecting his duty since overnight, rushed for it, and inflating his lungs to their utmost, sounded with all his might the long bellow of alarm. It was enough to make a man of iron start, in such a silence.

As if a spectre had been evoked by that thrilling, though deep-toned roar, a huge unforeseen gray form suddenly arose very loftily and towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as a single beam of electric light evokes phantasmagoria on the screen of a magic lantern.

Men appeared, almost close enough to touch them, leaning over the bulwarks, staring at them with eyes distended in the awakening of surprise and dread.

The /Marie's/ men rushed for oars, spars, boat-hooks, anything they could lay their hands on for fenders, and held them out to shove off that grisly thing and its impending visitors. Lo! these others, terrified also, put out large beams to repel them likewise.

But there came only a very faint creaking in the topmasts, as both standing gears momentarily entangled became disentangled without the least damage; the shock, very gentle in such a calm had been almost wholly deadened; indeed, it was so feeble that it really seemed as if the other ship had no substance, that it was a mere pulp, almost without weight.

When the fright was over, the men began to laugh; they had recognised each other.

"/La Marie/, ahoy! how are ye, lads?"

"Halloa! Gaos, Laumec, Guermeur!"

The spectre ship was the /Reine-Berthe/, also of Paimpol, and so the sailors were from neighbouring villages; that thick, tall fellow with the huge, black beard, showing his teeth when he laughed, was Kerjegou, one of the Ploudaniel boys, the others were from Plounes or Plounerin.

"Why didn't you blow your fog-horn, and be blowed to you, you herd of savages?" challenged Larvoer of the /Reine-Berthe/.

"If it comes to that, why didn't you blow yours, you crew of pirates-- you rank mess of toad-fish?"

"Oh, no! with us, d'ye see, the sea-law differs. /We're forbidden to make any noise!/"

He made this reply with the air of giving a dark hint, and a queer smile, which afterward came back to the memory of the men of the /Marie/, and caused them a great deal of thinking. Then, as if he thought he had said too much, he concluded with a joke:

"Our fog-horn, d'ye see, was burst by this rogue here a-blowing too hard into it." He pointed to a sailor with a face like a Triton, a man all bull-neck and chest, extravagantly broad-shouldered, low-set upon his legs, with something unspeakably grotesque and unpleasant in the deformity of strength.

While they were looking at each other, waiting for breeze or undercurrent to move one vessel faster than the other and separate them, a general palaver began. Leaning over the side, but holding each other off at a respectable distance with their long wooden props, like besieged pikemen repelling an assault, they began to chat about home, the last letters received, and sweethearts and wives.

"I say! my old woman," said Kerjegou, "tells me she's had the little boy we were looking for; that makes half-score-two now!"

Another had found himself the father of twins; and a third announced the marriage of pretty Jenny Caroff, a girl well known to all the Icelanders, with some rich and infirm old resident of the Commune of Plourivo. As they were eyeing each other as if through white gauze, this also appeared to alter the sound of the voices, which came as if muffled and from far away.

Meanwhile Yann could not take his eyes off one of those brother fishermen, a little grizzled fellow, whom he was quite sure he never had seen before, but who had, nevertheless, straightway said to him, "How d'o, long Yann?" with all the familiarity of bosom acquaintance. He wore the provoking ugliness of a monkey, with an apish twinkling of mischief too in his piercing eyes.

"As for me," said Larvoer, of the /Reine-Berthe/, "I've been told of the death of the grandson of old Yvonne Moan, of Ploubazlanec--who was serving his time in the navy, you know, in the Chinese squadron--a very great pity."

On hearing this, all the men of /La Marie/ turned towards Yann to learn if he already knew anything of the sad news.

"Ay," he answered in a low voice, but with an indifferent and haughty air, "it was told me in the last letter my father sent me." They still kept on looking at him, curious at finding out the secret of his grief, and it made him angry.

These questions and answers were rapidly exchanged through the pallid mists, so the moments of this peculiar colloquy skipped swiftly by.

"My wife wrote me at the same time," continued Larvoer, "that Monsieur Mevel's daughter has left the town to live at Ploubazlanec and take care of her old grand-aunt--Granny Moan. She goes out to needlework by the day now--to earn her living. Anyhow, I always thought, I did, that she was a good, brave girl, in spite of her fine-lady airs and her furbelows."

Then again they all stared at Yann, which made him still more angry; a red flush mounted to his cheeks, under their tawny tan.

With Larvoer's expression of opinion about Gaud ended this parley with the crew of the /Reine-Berthe/, none of whom were ever again to be seen by human eyes. For a moment their faces became more dim, their vessel being already farther away; and then, all at once, the men of the /Marie/ found they had nothing to push against, nothing at the end of their poles--all spars, oars, odds and ends of deck-lumber, were groping and quivering in emptiness, till they fell heavily, one after the other, down into the sea, like their own arms, lopped off and inert.

They pulled all the useless defences on board. The /Reine-Berthe/, melting away into the thick fog, had disappeared as suddenly as a painted ship in a dissolving view. They tried to hail her, but the only response was a sort of mocking clamour--as of many voices--ending in a moan, that made them all stare at each other in surprise.

This /Reine-Berthe/ did not come back with the other Icelandic fishers; and as the men of the /Samuel-Azenide/ afterward picked up in some fjord an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were inscribed upon black slabs in the church.

From the very time of that apparition--the date of which was well remembered by the men of the /Marie/--until the time of their return, there had been no really dangerous weather on the Icelandic seas, but a great storm from the west had, three weeks before, swept several sailors overboard, and swallowed up two vessels. The men remembered Larvoer's peculiar smile, and putting things together many strange conjectures were made. In the dead of night, Yann, more than once, dreamed that he again saw the sailor who blinked like an ape, and some of the men of the /Marie/ wondered if, on that remembered morning, they had not been talking with ghosts.

CHAPTER XII THE STRANGE COUPLE

Summer advanced, and, at the end of August, with the first autumnal mists, the Icelanders came home.

For the last three months the two lone women had lived together at Ploubazlanec in the Moan's cottage. Gaud filled a daughter's place in the poor birthplace of so many dead sailors. She had sent hither all that remained from the sale of her father's house; her grand bed in the town fashion, and her fine, different coloured dresses. She had made herself a plainer black dress, and like old Yvonne, wore a mourning cap, of thick white muslin, adorned merely with simple plaits. Every day she went out sewing at the houses of the rich people in the town, and returned every evening without being detained on her way home by any sweetheart. She had remained as proud as ever, and was still respected as a fine lady; and as the lads bade her good-night, they always raised a hand to their caps.

Through the sweet evening twilight, she walked home from Paimpol, all along the cliff road inhaling the fresh, comforting sea air. Constant sitting at needlework had not deformed her like many others, who are always bent in two over their work--and she drew up her beautiful supple form perfectly erect in looking over the sea, fairly across to where Yann was it seemed.

The same road led to his home. Had she walked on much farther, towards a well-known rocky windswept nook, she would come to that hamlet of Pors-Even, where the trees, covered with gray moss, grew crampedly between the stones, and are slanted over lowly by the western gales. Perhaps she might never more return there, although it was only a league away; but once in her lifetime she had been there, and that was enough to cast a charm over the whole road; and, besides, Yann would certainly often pass that way, and she could fancy seeing him upon the bare moor, stepping between the stumpy reeds.

She loved the whole region of Ploubazlanec, and was almost happy that fate had driven her there; she never could have become resigned to live in any other place.

Towards this end of August, a southern warmth, diffusing languor, rises and spreads towards the north, with luminous afterglows and stray rays from a distant sun, which float over the Breton seas. Often the air is calm and pellucid, without a single cloud on high.

At the hour of Gaud's return journey, all things had already begun to fade in the nightfall, and become fused into close, compact groups. Here and there a clump of reeds strove to make way between stones, like a battle-torn flag; in a hollow, a cluster of gnarled trees formed a dark mass, or else some straw-thatched hamlet indented the moor. At the cross-roads the images of Christ on the cross, which watch over and protect the country, stretched out their black arms on their supports like real men in torture; in the distance the Channel appeared fair and calm, one vast golden mirror, under the already darkened sky and shade-laden horizon.