nwhile he continues his sinister operations. Nothing is more
unpleasant than an interview with this monster: amid the rolling waves
and breakers, or in the thick of the mist, the sailor perceives,
sometimes, a strange creature with a beetle brow, wide nostrils,
flattened ears, an enormous mouth, gap-toothed jaws, peaked eyebrows,
and great grinning eyes. When the lightning is livid, he appears red;
when it is purple, he looks wan. He has a stiff spreading beard, running
with water, and overlapping a sort of pelerine, ornamented with fourteen
shells, seven before and seven behind. These shells are curious to those
who are learned in conchology. The King of the Auxcriniers is only seen
in stormy seas. He is the terrible harbinger of the tempest. His hideous
form traces itself in the fog, in the squall, in the tempest of rain.
His breast is hideous. A coat of scales covers his sides like a vest. He
rises above the waves which fly before the wind, twisting and curling
like thin shavings of wood beneath the carpenter's plane. Then his
entire form issues out of the foam, and if there should happen to be in
the horizon any vessels in distress, pale in the twilight, or his face
lighted up with a sinister smile, he dances terrible and uncouth to
behold. It is an evil omen indeed to meet him on a voyage.

At the period when the people of St. Sampson were particularly excited
on the subject of Gilliatt, the last persons who had seen the King of
the Auxcriniers declared that his pelerine was now ornamented with only
thirteen shells. Thirteen! He was only the more dangerous. But what had
become of the fourteenth? Had he given it to some one? No one would say
positively; and folks confined themselves to conjecture. But it was an
undoubted fact that a certain Mons. Lupin Mabier, of Godaines, a man of
property, paying a good sum to the land tax, was ready to depose on
oath, that he had once seen in the hands of Gilliatt a very remarkable
kind of shell.

It was not uncommon to hear dialogues like the following among the
country people:--

"I have a fine bull here, neighbour, what do you say?"

"Very fine, neighbour?"

"It is a fact, tho' 'tis I who say it; he is better though for tallow
than for meat."

"Ver dia!"

"Are you sure that Gilliatt hasn't cast his eye upon it?"

Gilliatt would stop sometimes beside a field where some labourers were
assembled, or near gardens in which gardeners were engaged, and would
perhaps hear th