ods in the auto. We established ourselves on
a hillside, pines all around us, the sea at our feet, a beautiful blue
sky overhead, and not a sound to break the stillness except sometimes,
in the distance, the sirene of a passing auto. We had our tea-basket,
found a nice clear space to make a fire, which we did very prudently,
scooping out a great hole in the ground and making a sort of oven. It
was very difficult to keep the children from tumbling into the hole as
they were rolling about on the soft ground, but we got home without any
serious detriment to life or limb.

* * * * *

The life in our quarter on the quais is very different, an extraordinary
animation and movement. There are hundreds of vessels of every
description in the port. All day and all night boats are coming in and
going out: The English steamers with their peculiar, dull, penetrating
whistle that one hears at a great distance--steam tugs that take
passengers and luggage out to the Atlantic liners, lying just outside
the digue--yachts, pilot boats, easily distinguished by a broad white
line around their hulls, and a number very conspicuously printed in
large black letters on their white sails, "baliseurs," smart-looking
little craft that take buoys out to the various points where they must
be laid. One came in the other day with two large, red, bell-shaped
buoys on her deck which made a great effect from a distance; we were
standing on the pier, and couldn't imagine what they were; "avisos"
(dispatch-boats), with their long, narrow flamme, which marks them as
war vessels, streaming out in the wind. Their sailors looked very
picturesque in white jerseys and blue berets with red pompons. Small
steamers that run along the coast from Calais to Dunkirk--others, cargo
boats, broad and deep in the water, that take fruit and eggs over to
England. The baskets of peaches, plums, and apricots look most
appetizing when they are taken on board. The steamers look funny when
they come back with empty baskets, quantities of them, piled up on the
decks, tied to the masts. Many little pleasure boats--flat, broad rowing
boats that take one across the harbour to the Gare Maritime (which is a
long way around by the bridge), a most uncomfortable performance at low
tide, as you go down long, steep, slippery steps with no railing, and
have to scramble into the boat as well as you can.

Of course, there are fishing-boats of every description, f