Over there it was true, far away in front of Agay, a brig was advancing towards us; I could distinctly see with my glasses her rounded sails puffed out by the wind.
"Pooh, it's the breeze from Agay," answered Raymond, "it is calm round Cape Roux."
"Talk away, we shall have a west wind," replied Bernard.
I leant over to look at the barometer in the saloon. It had fallen during the last half hour. I told Bernard, who smiled and whispered:
"It feels like a westerly wind, sir."
And now my curiosity awakens; the curiosity special to all those who wander over the sea, which makes them see everything, notice everything, and take an interest in the smallest detail. My glasses no longer leave my eyes; I look at the colour of the water on the horizon. It remains clear, varnished, unruffled. If there is a breeze, it is still far off.
What a personage the wind is for the sailors! They speak of it as of a man, an all-powerful sovereign, sometimes terrible and sometimes kindly. It is the main topic of conversation all the day through, and it is the subject of one's incessant thoughts throughout the days and nights. You land folk, know it not! As for us, we know it better than our father or our mother, the invisible, the terrible, the capricious, the sly, the treacherous, the devouring tyrant. We love it and we dread it; we know its maliciousness and its anger, which the warnings in the heavens or in the depths, slowly teach us to anticipate. It forces us to think of it at every minute, at every second, for the struggle between it and us, is indeed ceaseless. All our being is on the alert for the battle; our eye to detect undiscernible appearances; our skin to feel its caress or its blow, our spirit to recognize its mood, foresee its caprices, judge whether it is calm or wayward. No enemy, no woman gives us so powerful a sensation of struggle, nor compels us to so much foresight, for it is the master of the sea, it is that thing which we may avoid, make use of, or fly from, but which we can never subdue. And there reigns in the soul of a sailor as in that of a believer, the idea of an irascible and formidable God, the mysterious, religious, infinite fear of the wind, and respect for its power.
"Here it comes, sir," Bernard said to me.
Far away, very far away, at the end of the horizon, a blue-black line lengthens out on the water. It is nothing, a shade, an imperceptible shadow; it is the wind. Now we await it motionless, under the heat of the sun.
I look at the time, eight o'clock, and I say: