t was often seen with his net. He spared the
birds, but not the fish. Ill-luck to these dumb creatures! He was an
excellent swimmer.

Solitude either develops the mental powers, or renders men dull and
vicious. Gilliatt sometimes presented himself under both these aspects.
At times, when his features wore that air of strange surprise already
mentioned, he might have been taken for a man of mental powers scarcely
superior to the savage. At other moments an indescribable air of
penetration lighted up his face. Ancient Chaldea possessed some men of
this stamp. At certain times the dullness of the shepherd mind became
transparent, and revealed the inspired sage.

After all, he was but a poor man; uninstructed, save to the extent of
reading and writing. It is probable that the condition of his mind was
at that limit which separates the dreamer from the thinker. The thinker
wills, the dreamer is a passive instrument. Solitude sinks deeply into
pure natures, and modifies them in a certain degree. They become,
unconsciously, penetrated with a kind of sacred awe. The shadow in which
the mind of Gilliatt constantly dwelt was composed in almost equal
degrees of two elements, both obscure, but very different. Within
himself all was ignorance and weakness; without, infinity and mysterious
power.

By dint of frequent climbing on the rocks, of escalading the rugged
cliffs, of going to and fro among the islands in all weathers, of
navigating any sort of craft which came to hand, of venturing night and
day in difficult channels, he had become, without taking count of his
other advantages, and merely in following his fancy and pleasure, a
seaman of extraordinary skill.

He was a born pilot. The true pilot is the man who navigates the bed of
the ocean even more than its surface. The waves of the sea are an
external problem, continually modified by the submarine conditions of
the waters in which the vessel is making her way. To see Gilliatt
guiding his craft among the reefs and shallows of the Norman
Archipelago, one might have fancied that he carried in his head a plan
of the bottom of the sea. He was familiar with it all, and feared
nothing.

He was better acquainted with the buoys in the channels than the
cormorants who make them their resting-places. The almost imperceptible
differences which distinguish the four upright buoys of the Creux,
Alligande, the Tremies, and the Sardrette, were perfectly visible and
clear to him, even