The trough was drifting on the sea, which had now grown calm.  The holy man knelt and gave thanks to the Lord who had delivered him from the snares of the demon.  Then he recognised, sitting on a block of ice, the mother bear who had spoken during the storm.  She pressed her beloved child to her bosom, and in her hand she held a purple book marked with a golden cross.  Hailing the granite trough, she saluted the holy man with these words: 

“Pax tibi Mael.”

And she held out the book to him.

The holy man recognised his evangelistary, and, full of astonishment, he sang in the tepid air a hymn to the Creator and His creation.

V. THE BAPTISM OF THE PENGUINS

After having drifted for an hour the holy man approached a narrow strand, shut in by steep mountains.  He went along the coast for a whole day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an insuperable barrier.  He discovered in this way that it was a round island in the middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds.  He joyfully breathed the fresh breath of the moist air.  Rain fell, and this rain was so pleasant that the holy man said to the Lord: 

“Lord, this is the island of tears, the island of contrition.”

The strand was deserted.  Worn out with fatigue and hunger, he sat down on a rock in the hollow of which there lay some yellow eggs, marked with black spots, and about as large as those of a swan.  But he did not touch them, saying: 

“Birds are the living praises of God.  I should not like a single one of these praises to be lacking through me.”

And he munched the lichens which he tore from the crannies of the rocks.

The holy man had gone almost entirely round the island without meeting any inhabitants, when he came to a vast amphitheatre formed of black and red rocks whose summits became tinged with blue as they rose towards the clouds, and they were filled with sonorous cascades.

The reflection from the polar ice had hurt the old man’s eyes, but a feeble gleam of light still shone through his swollen eyelids.  He distinguished animated forms which filled the rocks, in stages, like a crowd of men on the tiers of an amphitheatre.  And at the same time, his ears, deafened by the continual noises of the sea, heard a feeble sound of voices.  Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them.

Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus: