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.
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.
