for me
before settling themselves down to eat. There were three of them: a man
from Marseilles and two Corsicans; they all looked alike--small, and
bearded, with tanned, cracked faces, and the same goat-skin sailor's
jacket. But they had completely different ways and temperaments.

You could immediately sense the difference in the two races by their
conduct. The Marseillais, industrious and lively, always busy, always
on the move, going round the island from morning till night, gardening,
fishing, or collecting gulls' eggs. He would lie in wait in the scrub
to catch a passing goat to milk. And there was always some garlic
mayonnaise or bouillabaisse on the hob.

The Corsicans, however, did absolutely nothing over and above their
duties. They regarded themselves as Civil Servants and spent whole days
in the kitchen playing cards only pausing to perform the ritualistic
relighting of their pipes or using scissors to cut up large wads of
green tobacco in their palms.

Otherwise, all three, Marseillais and Corsicans, were good, simple,
straight-forward folk, and were full of consideration for their
visitor, although I must have seemed a very queer fish to them....

The thought of someone coming to stay in the lighthouse for pleasure,
was beyond their grasp. These were men who found the days interminably
long and were ecstatic when their turn came to go ashore. In the warm
season, this great relief came every month. Ten days off after thirty
days on; that was the rule. In the winter, though, in rough weather, no
rules could be enforced. The wind blew strongly, the waves ran high,
the _Sanguinaires_ were shrouded in white sea spray, and they were cut
off for two or three months at a time, sometimes in terrible conditions.

--I tell you what happened to me, monsieur,--old Bartoli told me one
day, while we were eating,--it was five years ago, at this very table,
one winter evening, just like this one. That night, there were just the
two of us, me and a fellow keeper called Tcheco.... The others were
ashore, or sick, or else on leave.... I can't remember, now.... We were
finishing our dinners, quite contentedly.... Suddenly, my fellow keeper
stopped eating, looked at me with strange eyes, and fell forward onto
the table with outstretched arms. I went to him; I shook him; I called
his name:

"--Hey Tche!... Hey Tche!...

"No response! He was dead!... You can't imagine how I felt! I stayed
there, idiot-like and trembling,