till held up her arms, and biting her lip, she slowly ran her
fingers through the golden mass, like a child playing with a toy, while
thinking of something else; and again letting it fall, she quickly
unplaited it to spread it out; soon she was covered with her own locks,
which fell to her knees, looking like some Druidess.

And sleep having come, notwithstanding love and an impulse to weep, she
threw herself roughly in her bed, hiding her face in the silken masses
floating round her outspread like a veil.

In her hut in Ploubazlanec, Granny Moan, who was on the other and darker
side of her life, had also fallen to sleep--the frozen sleep of old
age--dreaming of her grandson and of death.

And at this same hour, on board the _Marie_, on the Northern Sea, which
was very heavy on this particular evening, Yann and Sylvestre--the two
longed-for rovers--sang ditties to one another, and went on gaily with
their fishing in the everlasting daylight.

CHAPTER VI--NEWS FROM HOME

About a month later, around Iceland, the weather was of that rare kind
that the sailors call a dead calm; in other words, in the air nothing
moved, as if all the breezes were exhausted and their task done.

The sky was covered with a white veil, which darkened towards its lower
border near the horizon, and gradually passed into dull gray leaden
tints; over this the still waters threw a pale light, which fatigued
the eyes and chilled the gazer through and through. All at once, liquid
designs played over the surface, such light evanescent rings as one
forms by breathing on a mirror. The sheen of the waters seemed covered
with a net of faint patterns, which intermingled and reformed, rapidly
disappearing. Everlasting night or everlasting day, one could scarcely
say what it was; the sun, which pointed to no special hour, remained
fixed, as if presiding over the fading glory of dead things; it appeared
but as a mere ring, being almost without substance, and magnified
enormously by a shifting halo.

Yann and Sylvestre, leaning against one another, sang "Jean-Francois de
Nantes," the song without an end; amused by its very monotony, looking
at one another from the corner of their eyes as if laughing at the
childish fun, with which they began the verses over and over again,
trying to put fresh spirit into them each time. Their cheeks were rosy
under the sharp freshness of the morning: the pure air they breathed was
strengthening, and they inhaled it d