En route this morning for the squadron out on the open sea. At the end of a half hour the sinister shore of China disappears behind us, and the smoke-stacks of the iron-clads begin to pour forth their black smoke upon the horizon. We fear we shall have to turn back, the weather is so bad.
Dripping with fog, however, we arrive at last, and I jump aboard the Redoutable, where my comrades, with no taste of high life in China to break the monotony, have been at work for forty days.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Monsignor Jarlin, the coadjutor of Monsignor Favier.
V
RETURN TO NING-HIA
Six weeks later. A cold and gloomy morning. After having been at Tien-Tsin, Pekin, and other places, where so many strange and gloomy things have come to our notice, here we are back again at Ning-Hia, which we have had time to forget; our boat has gone back to its old moorings, and we return to the French fort.
It is cold and dull; autumn, which is so severe in these parts, has brought with it sudden frosts; the birches and willows have lost all their leaves, and the sky is cold and lowering.
The Zouaves who are living in the fort, and who came so light-heartedly only a month ago to take the place of our sailors, have already buried some of their number, who died of typhus or were shot. This very morning we have paid the last honors to two of them, killed by Russian balls in a particularly tragic manner, all the result of a mistake.