then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the
spanker, which was close-reefed against its mast.

Then, along the hull of the boat, which suddenly heeled over and was
running at top speed, there was a soft, crisp sound of water hissing
and rushing past. The prow ripped up the sea like the share of a
plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and
fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and
falls in a ridge. At each wave they met--and there was a short,
chopping sea--the _Pearl_ shivered from the point of the bowsprit to
the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew
harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow
into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting
for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look at
each of the vessels in the roads one after another; then they put
further out to look at the unfolding line of coast.

For three hours Pierre, easy, calm, and happy, wandered to and fro
over the dancing waters, guiding the thing of wood and canvas, which
came and went at his will, under the pressure of his hand, as if it
were a swift and docile winged creature.

He was lost in day-dreams, the dreams one has on horseback or on the
deck of a boat; thinking of his future, which should be brilliant, and
the joys of living intelligently. On the morrow he would ask his
brother to lend him fifteen hundred francs for three months, that he
might settle at once in the pretty rooms on the Boulevard Francois,
1er.

Suddenly the sailor said: "The fog is coming up, M'sieu Pierre. We
must go in."

He looked up and saw to the northward a gray shade, filmy but dense,
blotting out the sky and covering the sea; it was sweeping down on
them like a cloud fallen from above. He tacked for the land and made
for the pier, scudding before the wind and followed by the flying fog,
which gained upon them. When it reached the _Pearl_, wrapping her in
its intangible density, a cold shudder ran over Pierre's limbs, and a
smell of smoke and mold, the peculiar smell of a sea fog, made him
close his mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapor. By the
time the boat was at her usual moorings in the harbor the whole town
was buried in this fine mist, which did not fall but yet wetted
everything like rain, and glided and rolled along the roofs and
streets like the flow of a river. Pierre, with his hands an