t long five years' exile, with
its dubious return, the thought of which already plucked at his
heart-strings.

Four o'clock in the morning now. The watch below came up, all three, to
relieve the others. Still rather sleepy, drinking in chestfuls of the
fresh, chill air, they stepped up, drawing their long sea-boots higher,
and having to shut their eyes, dazzled at first by a light so pale, yet
in such abundance.

Yann and Sylvestre took their breakfast of biscuits, which they had to
break with a mallet, and began to munch noisily, laughing at their being
so very hard. They had become quite merry again at the idea of going
down to sleep, snugly and warmly in their berths; and clasping
each other round the waist they danced up to the hatchway to an old
song-tune.

Before disappearing through the aperture they stopped to play with
Turc, the ship's dog, a young Newfoundland with great clumsy paws. They
sparred at him, and he pretended to bite them like a young wolf, until
he bit too hard and hurt them, whereupon Yann, with a frown and anger
in his quick-changing eyes, pushed him aside with an impatient blow that
sent him flying and made him howl. Yann had a kind heart enough, but his
nature remained rather untamed, and when his physical being was touched,
a tender caress was often more like a manifestation of brutal violence.

CHAPTER II--ICELANDERS

Their smack was named _La Marie_, and her master was Captain Guermeur.
Every year she set sail for the big dangerous fisheries, in the frigid
regions where the summers have no night. She was a very old ship, as
old as the statuette of her patron saint itself. Her heavy, oaken planks
were rough and worn, impregnated with ooze and brine, but still strong
and stout, and smelling strongly of tar. At anchor she looked an old
unwieldy tub from her so massive build, but when blew the mighty western
gales, her lightness returned, like a sea-gull awakened by the wind.
Then she had her own style of tumbling over the rollers, and rebounding
more lightly than many newer ones, launched with all your new fangles.

As for the crew of six men and the boy, they were "Icelanders," the
valiant race of seafarers whose homes are at Paimpol and Treguier, and
who from father to son are destined for the cod fisheries.

They hardly ever had seen a summer in France. At the end of each winter
they, with other fishers, received the parting blessing in the harbour
of Paimpol. And for that fete-