fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered
out:

"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
started very well, but it has pulled me up."

Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"

"No, thanks, it will go off."

And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:

"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into such a
state. You are not a child."

And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.

Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the boat
moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her temples.

But father Roland presently called out:

"Look, the Prince Albert is catching us up!"

They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two
raking funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks,
the Southampton packet came ploughing on at full steam, crowded with
passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance of
haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut through
the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided off along
the hull.

When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted his hat,
the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols eagerly
waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she went on her
way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and glassy
surface of the sea.

There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every
part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which swallowed them
up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter
craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow
of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, towards the
devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and
spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners,
and three-masted vessels with their tangled mass of rigging. The
hurrying steamships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom
of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which
had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the
main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the
setting sun.

Mme. Ro