"Me! Lor', yes, some day I will marry." He smiled, did the always
contemptuous Yann, rolling his passionate eyes. "But I'll have none of
the lasses at home; no, I'll wed the sea, and I invite ye all in the
barkey now, to the ball I'll give at my wedding."

They kept on hauling in, for their time could not be lost in chatting;
they had an immense quantity of fish in a traveling shoal, which had not
ceased passing for the last two days.

They had been up all night, and in thirty hours had caught more than a
thousand prime cods; so that even their strong arms were tired and they
were half asleep. But their bodies remained active and they continued
their toil, though occasionally their minds floated off into regions of
profound sleep. But the free air they breathed was as pure as that of
the first young days of the world, and so bracing, that notwithstanding
their weariness they felt their chests expand and their cheeks glow as
at arising.

Morning, the true morning light, at length came; as in the days of
Genesis, it had "divided from the darkness," which had settled upon the
horizon and rested there in great heavy masses; and by the clearness
of vision now, it was seen night had passed, and that that first vague
strange glimmer was only a forerunner. In the thickly-veiled heavens,
broke out rents here and there, like side skylights in a dome, through
which pierced glorious rays of light, silver and rosy. The lower-lying
clouds were grouped round in a belt of intense shadow, encircling the
waters and screening the far-off distance in darkness. They hinted as of
a space in a boundary; they were as curtains veiling the infinite, or
as draperies drawn to hide the too majestic mysteries, which would have
perturbed the imagination of mortals.