owless
sea.

I may well remember that last night spent with the pilots of the Third
Company. I have known the spell of moonlight since, on various seas
and coasts--coasts of forests, of rocks, of sand dunes--but no magic so
perfect in its revelation of unsuspected character, as though one were
allowed to look upon the mystic nature of material things. For hours I
suppose no word was spoken in that boat. The pilots, seated in two rows
facing each other, dozed, with their arms folded and their chins resting
upon their breasts. They displayed a great variety of caps: cloth, wool,
leather, peaks, ear-flaps, tassels, with a picturesque round beret or
two pulled down over the brows; and one grandfather, with a shaved, bony
face and a great beak of a nose, had a cloak with a hood which made him
look in our midst like a cowled monk being carried off goodness knows
where by that silent company of seamen--quiet enough to be dead.

My fingers itched for the tiller, and in due course my friend, the
patron, surrendered it to me in the same spirit in which the family
coachman lets a boy hold the reins on an easy bit of road.

There was a great solitude around us; the islets ahead, Monte Cristo and
the Chateau daft in full light, seemed to float toward us--so steady, so
imperceptible was the progress of our boat. "Keep her in the furrow
of the moon," the patron directed me, in a quiet murmur, sitting down
ponderously in the stern-sheets and reaching for his pipe.

The pilot station in weather like this was only a mile or two to the
westward of the islets; and presently, as we approached the spot, the
boat we were going to relieve swam into our view suddenly, on her way
home, cutting black and sinister into the wake of the moon under a
sable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of white
and dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth we
slipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail
came out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on
their feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out,
a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats were
stern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, with a shining sail to our
eyes, we turned all black to their vision, and drew away from them under
a sable wing. That extraordinary uproar died away almost as suddenly
as it had begun; first one had enough of it and sat down, then another,