Silence.  Old Dan tugs the abbot by the sleeve, and whispers something in his ear.

Abbot—­Dan is asking me to pray for those who perished at sea.

The women exclaim in plaintive chorus: 

“For those who perished at sea!  For those who died at sea!”

Some of them kneel.  The abbot looks tenderly at their bowed heads, exhausted with waiting and fear, and says: 

“No priest should pray for those who died at sea—­these women should pray.  Make it so, O Lord, that they should not weep so much!”

Silence.  The incoming tide roars more loudly—­the ocean is carrying to the earth its noise, its secrets, its bitter, briny taste of unexplored depths.

Soft voices say: 

“The sea is coming.”

“High tide has started.”

“The sea is coming.”

Mariet kisses her father’s hand.

“Woman!” says the priest tenderly.  “Listen, Gart, isn’t it strange that this—­a woman”—­he strokes his daughter tenderly with his finger on her pure forehead—­“should be born of me, a man?”

Haggart smiles.

“And is it not strange that this should have become a wife to me, a man?” He embraces Mariet, bending her frail shoulders.

“Let us go to eat, Gart, my son.  Whoever she may be, I know one thing well.  She has prepared for you and me an excellent dinner.”

The people disperse quickly.  Mariet says confusedly and cheerfully: 

“I’ll run first.”

“Run, run,” answers the abbot.  “Gart, my son, call the atheist to dinner.  I’ll hit him with a spoon on the forehead; an atheist understands a sermon best of all if you hit him with a spoon.”

He waits and mutters: 

“The boy has commenced to ring the bells again.  He does it for himself, the rogue.  If we did not lock the steeple, they would pray there from morning until night.”

Haggart goes over to Khorre, near whom Dan is sitting.

“Khorre!  Let us go to eat—­the priest called you.”

“I don’t want to go, Noni.”

“So?  What are you going to do here on shore?”

“I will think, Noni, think.  I have so much to think to be able to understand at least something.”

Haggart turns around silently.  The abbot calls from the distance: 

“He is not coming?  Well, then, let him stay there.  And Dan—­never call Dan, my son”—­says the priest in his deep whisper, “he eats at night like a rat.  Mariet purposely puts something away for him in the closet for the night; when she looks for it in the morning, it is gone.  Just think of it, no one ever hears when he takes it.  Does he fly?”

Both go off.  Only the two old men, seated in a friendly manner on two neighbouring rocks, remain on the deserted shore.  And the old men resemble each other so closely, and whatever they may say to each other, the whiteness of their hair, the deep lines of their wrinkles, make them kin.