siren rose up menacingly.
Suddenly two Arabs, in dirty white burnouses and turbans bound with
cords of camel's hair, came running along the wharf. The siren hooted
again. The Arabs bounded over the gangway with grave faces. All the
recruits turned to examine them with a mixture of superiority and
deference, such as a schoolboy might display when observing the
agilities of a tiger. The ropes fell heavily from the posts of the
quay into the water, and were drawn up dripping by the sailors, and _Le
General Bertrand_ began to move out slowly among the motionless ships.

Domini, looking towards the land with the vague and yet inquiring glance
of those who are going out to sea, noticed the church of Notre dame de
la Garde, perched on its high hill, and dominating the noisy city,
the harbour, the cold, grey squadrons of the rocks and Monte Cristo's
dungeon. At the time she hardly knew it, but now, as she lay in bed in
the silent inn, she remembered that, keeping her eyes upon the church,
she had murmured a confused prayer to the Blessed Virgin for the
recruits. What was the prayer? She could scarcely recall it. A woman's
petition, perhaps, against the temptations that beset men shifting for
themselves in far-off and dangerous countries; a woman's cry to a woman
to watch over all those who wander.

When the land faded, and the white sea rose, less romantic
considerations took possession of her. She wished to sleep, and drank a
dose of a drug. It did not act completely, but only numbed her senses.
Through the long hours she lay in the dark cabin, looking at the faint
radiance that penetrated through the glass shutters of the skylight.
The recruits, humanised and drawn together by misery, were becoming
acquainted. The incessant murmur of their voices dropped down to her,
with the sound of the waves, and of the mysterious cries and creaking
shudders that go through labouring ships. And all these noises seemed to
her hoarse and pathetic, suggestive, too, of danger.

When they reached the African shore, and saw the lights of houses
twinkling upon the hills, the pale recruits were marshalled on the white
road by Zouaves, who met them from the barracks of Robertville. Already
they looked older than they had looked when they embarked. Domini saw
them march away up the hill. They still clung to their bags and bundles.
Some of them, lifting shaky voices, tried to sing in chorus. One of
the Zouaves angrily shouted to them to be quiet.