You see, eh? You see what you
are coming to!"

There was a roar of laughter from the man at the table in the rear,
that was echoed in a guffaw by Pierre Lachance, as Jean, leaning
suddenly forward, caught Madame Fregeau's comely, motherly face between
his hands and kissed her on both cheeks.

"I'd ask for no better luck, Jacques!" he cried--and ran for the door.

Laughing, and with a wave of his hand back at the little group, he
opened the door, closed it behind him with a powerful wrench against
the wind; and then, outside, stood still for a moment, as though taken
utterly by surprise at the abandon of the night. He had not been out
before that day. Like all, or nearly all of Bernay-sur-Mer he had
remained snugly indoors--for what was a fisherman to do in weather like
that! Mend nets? Well, yes, he had mended nets. One must do that.
He shrugged his shoulders, making a wry grimace. Nets! But the night
was bad--much worse than he had imagined. And yet--yes--the storm was
at its height now, but the wind had changed--by morning, thank the
saints, it would be better.

It was black about him, inky black--all save a long, straggling,
twinkling line of lights from the cottage windows that bordered the
beach, and the dull yellow glow from the windows of the Bas Rhone at
his side. Around him a veritable bedlam seemed loosed--the wind, like
a horde of demons, shrieking, whistling and howling in unholy jubilee;
while heavier, more ominous, in a deeper roar came the booming of the
surf from where it broke upon the beach but little more than a hundred
yards in front of him.

Jean Laparde stood hesitant. It was quite true; Mother Fregeau had
been right! Marie-Louise would not expect him to-night, and it was a
good mile from the village to the house on the bluff, and yet--he
smiled a little, and suddenly, head down, struck out into the storm.

A flash of lightning, jagged, threw the night into a strange, tremulous
luminance--the headlands of the little bay; the mighty combers, shaking
their topped crests like manes, hurling themselves in impotent fury at
the shore, then spreading in thin creamy layers to lick up wide,
irregular patches of the beach; the sweep of the Mediterranean, so slow
to anger, but a tumbling rage of waters now as far as the eye could
reach; the whitewashed cottages; boats, dark objects without form or
shape, drawn far up on the sand; the pale, yellowish-green of the sward
stretching away behind