These different objects, and the persons in the cottage, who composed the only surviving members of the fisherman’s family, were strangely and wildly lit up by the blaze of the fire and by the still brighter glare of a resin torch stuck into a block of wood in the chimney-corner.  The red and yellow light played full on the weird face of the old man as he lay opposite to it, and glanced fitfully on the figures of the young girl, Gabriel, and the two children; the great, gloomy shadows rose and fell, and grew and lessened in bulk about the walls like visions of darkness, animated by a supernatural specter-life, while the dense obscurity outside spreading before the curtainless window seemed as a wall of solid darkness that had closed in forever around the fisherman’s house.  The night scene within the cottage was almost as wild and as dreary to look upon as the night scene without.

For a long time the different persons in the room sat together without speaking, even without looking at each other.  At last the girl turned and whispered something into Gabriel’s ear: 

“Perrine, what were you saying to Gabriel?” asked the child opposite, seizing the first opportunity of breaking the desolate silence—­doubly desolate at her age—­which was preserved by all around her.

“I was telling him,” answered Perrine, simply, “that it was time to change the bandages on his arm; and I also said to him, what I have often said before, that he must never play at that terrible game of the Soule again.”

The old man had been looking intently at Perrine and his grandchild as they spoke.  His harsh, hollow voice mingled with the last soft tones of the young girl, repeating over and over again the same terrible words, “Drowned! drowned!  Son and grandson, both drowned! both drowned!”

“Hush, grandfather,” said Gabriel, “we must not lose all hope for them yet.  God and the Blessed Virgin protect them!” He looked at the little delf image, and crossed himself; the others imitated him, except the old man.  He still tossed his hands over the coverlet, and still repeated, “Drowned! drowned!”

“Oh, that accursed Soule!” groaned the young man.  “But for this wound I should have been with my father.  The poor boy’s life might at least have been saved; for we should then have left him here.”

“Silence!” exclaimed the harsh voice from the bed.  “The wail of dying men rises louder than the loud sea; the devil’s psalm-singing roars higher than the roaring wind!  Be silent, and listen!  Francois drowned!  Pierre drowned!  Hark!  Hark!”

A terrific blast of wind burst over the house as he spoke, shaking it to its center, overpowering all other sounds, even to the deafening crash of the waves.  The slumbering child awoke, and uttered a scream of fear.  Perrine, who had been kneeling before her lover binding the fresh bandages on his wounded arm, paused in her occupation, trembling from head to foot.  Gabriel looked toward the window; his experience told him what must be the hurricane fury of that blast of wind out at sea, and he sighed bitterly as he murmured to himself, “God help them both—­man’s help will be as nothing to them now!”