In this way he passed Dieppe and followed a direction which, while it
varied by reason of curves and sudden turns, nevertheless, in his
opinion, ran parallel with the Norman coast. During the whole of this
first stage of his journey, he was only half-aware of what he was
doing and had no thought but of making headway, feeling certain that
his explorations would be interrupted from one minute to the next. It
did not seem to him that he was penetrating into unlimited regions,
but rather that he was really persistently pushing towards a goal
which was close at hand, but which receded so soon as he approached it
and which was no other than the extreme point of this miraculous
peninsula.

"There," he said to himself. "There it is. I've got there. The new
ground goes as far as that. . . ."

But the new ground continued to stretch into the darkness; and a
little later he repeated:

"It's over there. The line of breakers is closing up. I can see it."

But the line opened out, leaving a passage by which Simon pursued his
way.

Two o'clock. . . . Half-past two. . . . Sometimes the water was up to
his knees, sometimes his feet sank into a bed of thicker sand. These
were the low-lying parts, the valleys of the peninsula; and there
might perhaps be some, thought Simon where these beds would be deep
enough to bar his passage. He went on all the more briskly. Ascents
rose in front of him, leading him to mounds forty or fifty feet in
height, whose farther slopes he descended rapidly. And, lost in the
immensity of the sea, imprisoned by it, absorbed by it, he had the
illusion that he was running over its surface, along the back of great
frozen, motionless waves.

He halted. Before him a speck of light had crossed the darkness, a
long, a very long way off. Four times he saw the flame reappear at
regular intervals. Fifteen seconds later came a fresh series of
flashes, followed by a similar interval of darkness.

"A light-house!" murmured Simon. "A light-house which the disaster has
spared!"

Just here the embankment ran in the direction of the light-house; and
Simon calculated that it would thus end at Treport, or perhaps farther
north, if the light-house marked the estuary of the Somme, which was
highly probable. In that case he would have to walk four or five hours
longer, at the same swift pace.

But he lost the intermittent gleams as suddenly as he had caught sight
of them. He looked and failed to find them and felt overw