These words produced the same effect upon D’Artagnan as the hissing of the first bullet on a day of battle; he let go of both line and conger, which, dragging each other, returned again to the water.  D’Artagnan perceived, within half a league at most, the blue and marked profile of the rocks of Belle-Isle, dominated by the majestic whiteness of the castle.  In the distance, the land with its forests and verdant plains; cattle on the grass.  This was what first attracted the attention of the musketeer.  The sun darted its rays of gold upon the sea, raising a shining mist round this enchanted isle.  Little could be seen of it, owing to this dazzling light, but the salient points; every shadow was strongly marked, and cut with bands of darkness the luminous fields and walls.  “Eh! eh!” said D’Artagnan, at the aspect of those masses of black rocks, “these are fortifications which do not stand in need of any engineer to render a landing difficult.  How the devil can a landing be effected on that isle which God has defended so completely?”

“This way,” replied the patron of the bark, changing the sail, and impressing upon the rudder a twist which turned the boat in the direction of a pretty little port, quite coquettish, round, and newly battlemented.

“What the devil do I see yonder?” said D’Artagnan.

“You see Locmaria,” replied the fisherman.

“Well, but there?”

“That is Bangor.”

“And further on?”

“Sauzon, and then Le Palais.”

“Mordioux! It is a world.  Ah! there are some soldiers.”

“There are seventeen hundred men in Belle-Isle, monsieur,” replied the fisherman, proudly.  “Do you know that the least garrison is of twenty companies of infantry?”

“Mordioux!” cried D’Artagnan, stamping with his foot.  “His majesty was right enough.”

They landed.

Chapter LXIX: 
In which the Reader, no Doubt, will be as astonished as D’Artagnan was to
meet an Old Acquaintance.

There is always something in a landing, if it be only from the smallest sea-boat — a trouble and a confusion which do not leave the mind the liberty of which it stands in need in order to study at the first glance the new locality presented to it.  The moveable bridges, the agitated sailors, the noise of the water on the pebbles, the cries and importunities of those who wait upon the shores, are multiplied details of that sensation which is summed up in one single result — hesitation.  It was not, then, till after standing several minutes on the shore that D’Artagnan saw upon the port, but more particularly in the interior of the isle, an immense number of workmen in motion.  At his feet D’Artagnan recognized the five chalands laden with rough stone he had seen leave the port of Piriac.  The smaller stones were transported to the shore by means of a chain formed by twenty-five or thirty peasants.  The large stones were loaded on trollies which conveyed