the wall and gasped.  It was a stunning experience.  Then after staggering on a few paces in the shadow of the Fort casting a darkness more intense than that of a clouded night upon the canal, I saw the tiny light of a lantern standing on the quay, and became aware of muffled figures making towards it from various directions.  Pilots of the Third Company hastening to embark.  Too sleepy to be talkative they step on board in silence.  But a few low grunts and an enormous yawn are heard.  Somebody even ejaculates:  “Ah!  Coquin de sort!” and sighs wearily at his hard fate.

The patron of the Third Company (there were five companies of pilots at that time, I believe) is the brother-in-law of my friend Solary (Baptistin), a broad-shouldered, deep-chested man of forty, with a keen, frank glance which always seeks your eyes.  He greets me by a low, hearty, “He, l’ami.  Comment va?” With his clipped moustache and massive open face, energetic and at the same time placid in expression, he is a fine specimen of the southerner of the calm type.  For there is such a type in which the volatile southern passion is transmuted into solid force.  He is fair, but no one could mistake him for a man of the north even by the dim gleam of the lantern standing on the quay.  He is worth a dozen of your ordinary Normans or Bretons, but then, in the whole immense sweep of the Mediterranean shores, you could not find half a dozen men of his stamp.

Standing by the tiller, he pulls out his watch from under a thick jacket and bends his head over it in the light cast into the boat.  Time’s up.  His pleasant voice commands in a quiet undertone “Larguez.”  A suddenly projected arm snatches the lantern off the quay—­and, warped along by a line at first, then with the regular tug of four heavy sweeps in the bow, the big half-decked boat full of men glides out of the black breathless shadow of the Fort.  The open water of the avant-port glitters under the moon as if sown over with millions of sequins, and the long white breakwater shines like a thick bar of solid silver.  With a quick rattle of blocks and one single silky swish, the sail is filled by a little breeze keen enough to have come straight down from the frozen moon, and the boat, after the clatter of the hauled-in sweeps, seems to stand at rest, surrounded by a mysterious whispering so faint and unearthly that it may be the rustling of the brilliant, over-powering moonrays breaking like a rain-shower upon the hard, smooth, shadowless sea.

I may well remember that last night spent with the pilots of the Third Company.  I have known the spell of moonlight since, on various seas and coasts—­coasts of forests, of rocks, of sand dunes—­but no magic so perfect in its revelation of unsuspected character, as though one were allowed to look 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