[CHAPTER LXII]
AT SEA 25th December, Christmas Day.
It was the second day following, very early, at daybreak. I came up on deck, having scarcely slept a moment, after a very trying watch from midnight to four o'clock: we had been buffeted throughout the night by a gale of wind and a heavy sea.
Yves was there, wet through, but in his element and very much at ease; and, as soon as he saw me appear, he pointed out to me, smiling, a singular country which we were approaching.
Grey cliffs walled the distant horizon like a long rampart. A kind of calm fell upon the waters, although the wind continued to buffet us furiously. In the sky, dark heavy clouds slid one over the other, very rapidly: a leaden vault in movement; immense, dark things, which changed shape, which seemed in haste to pass, to reach a goal elsewhere, as if seized with the vertigo of some impending and formidable convulsion. Around us, thousands of reefs, dark heads which rose up everywhere amid this other silvered commotion made by the waves; they seemed like immense herds of sea monsters. They stretched as far as eye could see, these dangerous dark heads, the sea was covered with them. And then, beyond, on the distant cliff, the silhouettes of three very old towers, looking as if they had been planted alone there in the midst of a desert of granite, one of them greatly overtopping the two others, and rearing its tall figure like a giant who watches and presides. . . .
Yes! I recognize it well, and, like Yves, salute it with a smile; somewhat puzzled, nevertheless, to see it reappear so close to us, and in the midst of this festival of shadows, on a morning when I was not expecting it. . . . What were we going to do there, in its neighbourhood? This was no part of our original plan and I could not understand it.
It was a sudden decision of the captain, taken during my hour of sleep: to make for the entrance to the roadstead of Taureau, hard by Saint Pol, and seek a shelter there from the south wind, the open sea being now too rough for us.
And that was how it came about that, on his return to the northern waters, Yves' first visit was to the Creizker tower.
[CHAPTER LXIII]
CHERBOURG, 27th December, 1880.