“Touched us? Ho! Say it has crushed us and I’ll strike palms with you. Why, not a keel has passed out of the port since August. Where is the fishing-fleet? Where are the sardine sloops that ought to have sailed from Algiers? Where are the Icelanders?”
“Well, where are they?” I suggested.
“Where? Ask the semaphore yonder. Where are our salt schooners for the Welsh coast? I don’t know. They have not sailed, that’s all I know. You do well 168 to come with your circus and your elephant! You can peddle diamonds in the poor-house, too, if it suits your taste.”
“Have the German cruisers frightened all your craft from the sea?” I asked, astonished.
“Yes, partly. Then there’s an ugly French cruiser lying off Groix, yonder, and her black stacks are dribbling smoke all day and all night. We have orders to keep off and use Lorient when we want a port.”
“Do you know why the cruiser warns your fishing-boats from this coast?” I inquired.
“No,” he said, shortly.
“Do you know the name of the cruiser?”
“She's a new one, the Fer-de-Lance. And if I were not a patriot and a Breton I’d say: ‘May Sainte-Anne rot her where she lies; she’s brought a curse on the coast from Lorient to the Saint-Julien Light!—and the ghosts of the Icelanders will work her evil yet.’”
The mayor’s round, hairless face was red; he thumped the arm of his chair with pudgy fists and wagged his head.