A red dancing belt of light lay across the
broad slate-coloured ocean, and in the centre of it the little black
craft was wallowing and tumbling. The two seamen kept looking up at the
heavens, and then over their shoulders at the land, and I feared every
moment that they would put back before the gale burst. I was filled
with apprehension every time when the end of their pull turned their
faces skyward, and it was to draw their attention away from the
storm-drift that I asked them what the lights were which had begun to
twinkle through the dusk both to the right and to the left of us.
'That's Boulogne to the north, and Etaples upon the south,' said one of
the seamen civilly.
Boulogne! Etaples! How the words came back to me! It was to Boulogne
that in my boyhood we had gone down for the summer bathing. Could I not
remember as a little lad trotting along by my father's side as he paced
the beach, and wondering why every fisherman's cap flew off at our
approach? And as to Etaples, it was thence that we had fled for
England, when the folks came raving to the pier-head as we passed, and I
joined my thin voice to my father's as he shrieked back at them, for a
stone had broken my mother's knee, and we were all frenzied with our
fear and our hatred.
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