"Not before?"

"No, not before. Even that is very early."

The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when the
sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers had
eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything there
and then.

So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the white
rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they had slept
awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then it
was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme.
Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and
seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much to
the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.

Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:
"Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."

The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.

Roland stood up to look out like a captain.

"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."

And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:

"Here comes the packet from Southampton."

Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny
and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the rosy
sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could make out
the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance. And to
southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all
converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white
streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.

Roland asked: "Is not the Normandie due to-day?" And Jean replied:

"Yes, to-day."

"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."

The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:

"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to look,
Mme. Rosemilly?"

She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon,
without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it, a
circular rainbow--and then all manner