quantity of fish in a traveling shoal, which had not
ceased passing for the last two days.

They had been up all night, and in thirty hours had caught more than a
thousand prime cods; so that even their strong arms were tired and they
were half asleep. But their bodies remained active and they continued
their toil, though occasionally their minds floated off into regions of
profound sleep. But the free air they breathed was as pure as that of
the first young days of the world, and so bracing, that notwithstanding
their weariness they felt their chests expand and their cheeks glow as
at arising.

Morning, the true morning light, at length came; as in the days of
Genesis, it had "divided from the darkness," which had settled upon the
horizon and rested there in great heavy masses; and by the clearness
of vision now, it was seen night had passed, and that that first vague
strange glimmer was only a forerunner. In the thickly-veiled heavens,
broke out rents here and there, like side skylights in a dome, through
which pierced glorious rays of light, silver and rosy. The lower-lying
clouds were grouped round in a belt of intense shadow, encircling the
waters and screening the far-off distance in darkness. They hinted as of
a space in a boundary; they were as curtains veiling the infinite, or
as draperies drawn to hide the too majestic mysteries, which would have
perturbed the imagination of mortals.

On this special morning, around the small plank platform occupied by
Yann and Sylvestre, the shifting outer world had an appearance of
deep meditation, as though this were an altar recently raised; and the
sheaves of sun-rays, which darted like arrows under the sacred arch,
spread in a long glimmering stream over the motionless waves, as over
a marble floor. Then, slowly and more slowly yet loomed still another
wonder; a high, majestic, pink profile--it was a promontory of gloomy
Iceland.

Yann's wedding with the sea? Sylvestre was still thinking of it--after
resuming his fishing without daring to say anything more. He had felt
quite sad when his big brother had so turned the holy sacrament of
marriage into ridicule; and it particularly had frightened him, as he
was superstitious.

For so long, too, he had mused on Yann's marriage! He had thought that
it might take place with Gaud Mevel, a blonde lass from Paimpol; and
that he would have the happiness of being present at the marriage-feast
before starting for the navy, tha