ook 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 d'If in full light, seemed to float towards 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 drawing 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, then three or four together, and when all had left off with
mutters and growling half-laughs the sound of hearty chuckling became
audible, persistent, unnoticed. The cowled grandfather was very much
entertained somewhere within his hood.

He had not joined in the shouting of jokes, neither had he moved the
leas