They kept on hauling in, for their time could not be lost in chatting; they had an immense quantity of fish in a traveling shoal, which had not ceased passing for the last two days.

They had been up all night, and in thirty hours had caught more than a thousand prime cods; so that even their strong arms were tired and they were half asleep.  But their bodies remained active and they continued their toil, though occasionally their minds floated off into regions of profound sleep.  But the free air they breathed was as pure as that of the first young days of the world, and so bracing, that notwithstanding their weariness they felt their chests expand and their cheeks glow as at arising.

Morning, the true morning light, at length came; as in the days of Genesis, it had “divided from the darkness,” which had settled upon the horizon and rested there in great heavy masses; and by the clearness of vision now, it was seen night had passed, and that that first vague strange glimmer was only a forerunner.  In the thickly-veiled heavens, broke out rents here and there, like side skylights in a dome, through which pierced glorious rays of light, silver and rosy.  The lower-lying clouds were grouped round in a belt of intense shadow, encircling the waters and screening the far-off distance in darkness.  They hinted as of a space in a boundary; they were as curtains veiling the infinite, or as draperies drawn to hide the too majestic mysteries, which would have perturbed the imagination of mortals.

On this special morning, around the small plank platform occupied by Yann and Sylvestre, the shifting outer world had an appearance of deep meditation, as though this were an altar recently raised; and the sheaves of sun-rays, which darted like arrows under the sacred arch, spread in a long glimmering stream over the motionless waves, as over a marble floor.  Then, slowly and more slowly yet loomed still another wonder; a high, majestic, pink profile—­it was a promontory of gloomy Iceland.

Yann’s wedding with the sea?  Sylvestre was still thinking of it—­after resuming his fishing without daring to say anything more.  He had felt quite sad when his big brother had so turned the holy sacrament of marriage into ridicule; and it particularly had frightened him, as he was superstitious.

For so long, too, he had mused on Yann’s marriage!  He had thought that it might take place with Gaud Mevel, a blonde lass from Paimpol; and that he would have the happiness of being present at the marriage-feast before starting for the navy, that long five years’ exile, with its dubious return, the thought of which already plucked at his heart-strings.

Four o’clock in the morning now.  The watch below came up, all three, to relieve the others.  Still rather sleepy, drinking in chestfuls of the fresh, chill air, they stepped up, drawing their long sea-boots higher, and having to shut their eyes, dazzled at first by a light so pale, yet in such abundance.