The crust broken and the
mouthful of wine swallowed--it was literally no more than that with this
abstemious race--the pilots would pass the time stamping their feet on
the slabs of sea-salted stone and blowing into their nipped fingers. One
or two misanthropists would sit apart, perched on boulders like
manlike sea-fowl of solitary habits; the sociably disposed would
gossip scandalously in little gesticulating knots; and there would be
perpetually one or another of my hosts taking aim at the empty horizon
with the long, brass tube of the telescope, a heavy, murderous-looking
piece of collective property, everlastingly changing hands with
brandishing and levelling movements. Then about noon (it was a short
turn of duty--the long turn lasted twenty-four hours) another boatful
of pilots would relieve us--and we should steer for the old Phoenician
port, dominated, watched over from the ridge of a dust-gray, arid hill
by the red-and-white striped pile of the Notre Dame de la Garde.
All this came to pass as I had foreseen in the fullness of my very
recent experience. But also something not foreseen by me did happen,
something which causes me to remember my last outing with the pilots.
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