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.