like vast gray rags,--continually melting away in water, torrents of
water. There was wind too, and it howled through the ravines with a
deep-sounding tone. The whole surface of the bay, bespattered by the
rain, flogged by the gusts of wind that blew from all quarters,
splashed, moaned and seethed in violent agitation.

What wretched weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a
wife through such a deluge, in an unknown country!

* * * * *

No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my
obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:

"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."

Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned
a kind of little white wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us
on the waves, sculled by a couple of yellow boys stark naked in the
rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little
trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers throws open
for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in
what is called the "cabin" of a sampan.

There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which is moreover scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new
deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering
on my lid, and thus I started off for the town, lying in this box,
flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at
moments almost over-turned; and through the half-opened door of my