It was all I could do for him, for his Plouherzel was a long way from Brest, in the Côtes-du-Nord, in the depth of a remote part of the country, and at that time there was no railway which could take us there in a single day.
[CHAPTER IX]
5th May, 1875.
For many years Yves had been looking forward to seeing this Saint Pol-de-Léon, the little town where he was born.
In the days when we sailed the misty northern waters together, often as we passed in the offing, rocked in the grey swell, we had seen the legendary tower of Creizker upreared in the dark distance, above the mournful and monotonous stretch of land which, beyond, represented Brittany, the country of Léon.
And in the night watch we used to sing together the Breton song:
Oh! I was born in Finistère,
And in Saint Pol first saw the day:
My bell tower is beyond compare
And I love my native land O.
. . . . .
Give me back my heather
And my old bell tower.
But there was as it were a fatality, a throw of the dice against us: we had never succeeded in getting there, to this Saint Pol. At the last moment when we were on the point of starting out, something interfered to prevent us; our ship received unexpected orders and it was necessary to leave at once. And at the end we had come to regard with a kind of superstition this tower of Creizker, glimpsed only and always from a distance, in silhouette, on the edge of the mournful horizon.