"What a dog of a night!"

Against the opposite wall, tilted back in a chair, Papa Fregeau, the
patron, a rotund, aproned little individual, stopped the humming of his
song.

"_Tiens!_" said he fatuously. "But it is worse than that, Alcide,
since it is bad for business--hah! Not a franc profit to-night--the
Bas Rhone is desolated." And he resumed his song:

"In Languedoc, where the wine flows free,
We drink to----"

"Hold your bibulous tongue, Jacques Fregeau, and get something with
which to fix that window before we are as wet inside as you!"--it was
Madame Fregeau, stout, middle-aged and rosy, already hurrying to the
aid of the first speaker, who was wrestling with the dismantled
fastening.

Usually the nightly resort of the little fishing village of
Bernay-sur-Mer, the Bas Rhone, inn, cabaret, tavern or cafe, as it was
variously styled, now held but two others in the room that was
habitually crowded to suffocation. One was a young man, sturdily
built, with a tanned, clean-cut face, smooth-shaven save for a small
black moustache, whose rumpled black hair straggled in pleasing
disarray over his forehead; the other was older, a man of forty, whose
skin was bronzed almost to blackness from the Mediterranean sun. Both
were in rough fishermen's dress, sitting at dominoes under the hanging
lamp in the centre of the room. On the table, pushed to one side, were
the remains of a simple meal of bread and cheese; and from the inside
of the loaf, the younger man, somewhat to the detriment of his own game
and to the advantage of his opponent, had plucked out a piece of the
soft bread, which he had kneaded between his fingers into a plastic
lump, and thereafter, with amazing skill and deftness, had been engaged
in moulding into little faces, and heads, and figures of various sorts,
as he played.

The older man spoke slowly now:

"It is twenty years since we have had the like--you do not remember
that, Jean? You were too young."

Jean Laparde, an amused smile lurking in his dark eyes as he watched
Jacques Fregeau waddle obediently to his wife's side, shook his head.

"I was on the _Etoile_ that night," said the other, pulling at his
beard. "The good God dealt hardly with us--we lost two when we
beached; but not so hardly as with the _Antoinette_--none came to shore
from her. It was a night just such as this."

"Ay, that is so," corroborated Papa Fregeau, removing his apron and
stuffing it into the bro