rs of the breakwater
as they glided past.

When they reached the open sea, round the nose of the north pier which
had sheltered them, the fresher breeze puffed in the doctor's face and
on his hands, like a somewhat icy caress, filled his chest, which rose
with a long sigh to drink it in, and swelling the tawny sail, tilted the
Pearl on her beam and made her more lively. Jean Bart hastily hauled up
the jib, and the triangle of canvas, full of wind, looked like a wing;
then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the spinnaker, which was
close-reefed against his 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.

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 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