On Rouletabille’s left lay the sea, the immense gulf with slight waves; to his right was the decaying stretch of the marsh.  Stagnant water stretching to the horizon, coarse grass and reeds, an extraordinary tangle of water-plants, small ponds whose greenish scum did not stir under the stiff breeze, water that was heavy and dirty.  Along this narrow strip of land thrust thus between the marsh, the sky and the sea, he hurried, with many stumblings, his eyes fixed on the deserted gulf.  Suddenly he turned his head at a singular noise.  At first he didn’t see anything, but heard in the distance a vague clamoring while a sort of vapor commenced to rise from the marsh.  And then he noticed, nearer him, the high marsh grasses undulating.  Finally he saw a countless flock rising from the bed of the marshes.  Beasts, groups of beasts, whose horns one saw like bayonets, jostled each other trying to keep to the firm land.  Many of them swam and on the backs of some were naked men, stark naked, with hair falling to their shoulders and streaming behind them like manes.  They shouted war-cries and waved their clubs.  Rouletabille stopped short before this prehistoric invasion.  He would never have imagined that a few miles from the Newsky Prospect he could have found himself in the midst of such a spectacle.  These savages had not even a loin-cloth.  Where did they come from with their herd?  From what remote place in the world or in old and gone history had they emerged?  What was this new invasion?  What prodigious slaughter-house awaited these unruly herds?  They made a noise like thunder in the marsh.  Here were a thousand unkempt haunches undulating in the marsh like the ocean as a storm approaches.  The stark-naked men jumped along the route, waving their clubs, crying gutturally in a way the beasts seemed to understand.  They worked their way out from the marsh and turned toward the city, leaving behind, to swathe the view of them a while and then fade away, a pestilential haze that hung like an aura about the naked, long-haired men.  It was terrible and magnificent.  In order not to be shoved into the water, Rouletabille had climbed a small rock that stood beside the route, and had waited there as though petrified himself.  When the barbarians had finally passed by he climbed down again, but the route had become a bog of trampled filth.

Happily, he heard the noise of a primitive conveyance behind him.  It was a telega.  Curiously primitive, the telega is four-wheeled, with two planks thrown crudely across the axle-trees.  Rouletabille gave the man who was seated in it thee roubles, and jumped into the planks beside him, and the two little Finnish horses, whose manes hung clear to the mud, went like the wind.  Such crude conveyances are necessary on such crude roads, but it requires a strong constitution to make a journey on them.  Still, the reporter felt none of the jolting, he was so intent on the sea and the coast of Lachtka Bay.  The