back to-morrow."

Jeanne clasped her hands imploringly:

"Oh, papa, let us do it!"

The baron turned to M. de Lamare:

"Will you join us, vicomte? We can take breakfast down there."

And the matter was decided at once. From daybreak Jeanne was up and
waiting for her father, who dressed more slowly. They walked in the
dew across the level and then through the wood vibrant with the
singing of birds. The vicomte and Pere Lastique were seated on a
capstan.

Two other sailors helped to shove off the boat from shore, which was
not easy on the shingly beach. Once the boat was afloat, they all took
their seats, and the two sailors who remained on shore shoved it off.
A light, steady breeze was blowing from the ocean and they hoisted the
sail, veered a little, and then sailed along smoothly with scarcely
any motion. To landward the high cliff at the right cast a shadow on
the water at its base, and patches of sunlit grass here and there
varied its monotonous whiteness. Yonder, behind them, brown sails were
coming out of the white harbor of Fecamp, and ahead of them they saw a
rock of curious shape, rounded, with gaps in it looking something like
an immense elephant with its trunk in the water; it was the little
port of Etretat.

Jeanne, a little dizzy from the motion of the waves, held the side of