steamer
to get a good look at the little city of Saint-Martin, which we were now
rapidly approaching.

"It was just like all small seaports which serve as capitals of the
barren islands scattered along the coast--a large fishing village,
one foot on sea and one on shore, subsisting on fish and wild fowl,
vegetables and shell-fish, radishes and mussels. The island is very low
and little cultivated, yet it seems to be thickly populated. However, I
did not penetrate into the interior.

"After breakfast I climbed across a little promontory, and then, as the
tide was rapidly falling, I started out across the sands toward a kind
of black rock which I could just perceive above the surface of the
water, out a considerable distance.

"I walked quickly over the yellow plain. It was elastic, like flesh and
seemed to sweat beneath my tread. The sea had been there very lately.
Now I perceived it at a distance, escaping out of sight, and I no longer
could distinguish the line which separated the sands from ocean. I felt
as though I were looking at a gigantic supernatural work of enchantment.
The Atlantic had just now been before me, then it had disappeared into
the sands, just as scenery disappears through a trap; and I was now
walking in the midst of a desert. Only the feeling, the breath of the
salt-water, remained in me. I perceived the smell of the wrack, the
smell of the sea, the good strong smell of sea coasts. I walked fast; I
was no longer cold. I looked at the stranded wreck, which grew in size
as I approached, and came now to resemble an enormous shipwrecked whale.

"It seemed fairly to rise out of the ground, and on that great, flat,
yellow stretch of sand assumed wonderful proportions. After an hour's
walk I at last reached it. It lay upon its side, ruined and shattered,
its broken bones showing as though it were an animal, its bones of
tarred wood pierced with great bolts. The sand had already invaded it,
entering it by all the crannies, and held it and refused to let it go.
It seemed to have taken root in it. The bow had entered deep into this
soft, treacherous beach, while the stern, high in air, seemed to cast
at heaven, like a cry of despairing appeal, the two white words on the
black planking, Marie Joseph.

"I climbed upon this carcass of a ship by the lowest side; then, having
reached the deck, I went below. The daylight, which entered by the
stove-in hatches and the cracks in the sides, showed me dimly long