baskets formed between
vessel and shore, human torsos rising higher and higher above the
surface of the sea till bare feet touched dry sand. There the wives of
the skippers were on hand to take charge of the catch.

The beach was one sparkling shining display of beauty. The fish were
still alive and flopping in the baskets. Rock-salmon, like palpitating
carnation petals, lay there wriggling their soft vermilion and gasping
frantically for breath. Slimy devil-fish crooked their backs in agony or
drew together in masses of squirming, crawling suckers. Flounders, as
thin and flat as the sole of a shoe, pounded their tails vigorously
about. The wide, kite-like fins of rays, quivered in their sticky glue.
But squid, squid, everywhere, the most valuable prey of all! The waters
offshore seemed literally alive with squid! And the catch was
tremendous. Basket after basket shone with masses of transparent
iridescent crystal, the slimy crustaceans waving their tentacles
desperately about, setting the black of their receptacles a-glitter with
the soft colors of mother-of-pearl.

The stretch of water between the boats and the surf was as crowded as a
city street. "Cats" were wading out with flagons of water on their
shoulders. The sailors, tired of the lukewarm filthy drink from the
hogsheads aboard, longed for a draught from the ice-cold _font de Gas_.
Tiny girls from the cabins along shore, their ragged skirts innocently
rolled high above their knees, were splashing about in the puddles,
looking at everything with eager curiosity, and filling their aprons
with the littlest fish. Some of the vessels were to lie up on shore for
a day. And the oxen, owned cooperatively by the village fishermen,
splendid mastodontic creatures, yellow and white, were solemnly,
majestically, deliberately, lumbering in and out of the water, shaking
their enormous double chins with the gravity of Roman senators. Their
polished hoofs sank deep into the sand; but they could beach the
heaviest boat at a single pull. Driving them, geeing and hawing, was
Chepa, a sallow round-shouldered sickly fellow, with the expression of a
crabbed witch, on his foetus-like face. He might have been fifty. He
might have been fifteen. He was dressed in yellow oilskins, his bare red
feet protruding from under the huge baggy trousers, the skin on them
showing the outline of every tendon and every bone. As a boat would
slowly scrape along up out of the water, a throng of ragged