Proudly, like a bold swimmer, the Matutina crossed the dangerous Shambles shoal.  This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre—­a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves—­an arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau, only drowned—­a coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency which engulfs him,—­such is the Shambles shoal.  There hydras fight, leviathans meet.  There, says the legend, at the bottom of the gigantic shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized and sunk by the huge spider Kraken, also called the fish-mountain.  Such things lie in the fearful shadow of the sea.

These spectral realities, unknown to man, are manifested at the surface by a slight shiver.

In this nineteenth century, the Shambles bank is in ruins; the breakwater recently constructed has overthrown and mutilated, by the force of its surf, that high submarine architecture, just as the jetty, built at the Croisic in 1760, changed, by a quarter of an hour, the course of the tides.  And yet the tide is eternal.  But eternity obeys man more than man imagines.

CHAPTER IV.

A CLOUD DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS ENTERS ON THE SCENE.

The old man whom the chief of the band had named first the Madman, then the Sage, now never left the forecastle.  Since they crossed the Shambles shoal, his attention had been divided between the heavens and the waters.  He looked down, he looked upwards, and above all watched the north-east.

The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, stepped over the after hatchway, crossed the gangway, and went on to the forecastle.  He approached the old man, but not in front.  He stood a little behind, with elbows resting on his hips, with outstretched hands, the head on one side, with open eyes and arched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of his mouth—­an attitude of curiosity hesitating between mockery and respect.

The old man, either that it was his habit to talk to himself, or that hearing some one behind incited him to speech, began to soliloquize while he looked into space.

“The meridian, from which the right ascension is calculated, is marked in this century by four stars—­the Polar, Cassiopeia’s Chair, Andromeda’s Head, and the star Algenib, which is in Pegasus.  But there is not one visible.”

These words followed each other mechanically, confused, and scarcely articulated, as if he did not care to pronounce them.  They floated out of his mouth and dispersed.  Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost fires of the soul.

The skipper broke in, “My lord!”

The old man, perhaps rather deaf as well as very thoughtful, went on,—­