were tied up in cotton kerchiefs or in cotton nightcaps; these being
white, together with the long, thick, aprons also white, were in
startling contrast to the blue of the sky and to the changing sea-
tones.

Between these women and the incoming tide, twice daily, was fought a
persistent, unrelenting duel. It was a duel, on the part of the fish-
wives, against time, against the fate of the tides, against the blind
forces of nature. For this combat the women were armed to the teeth,
clad as they were in their skeleton muscular leanness; helmeted with
their heads of iron; visored in the bronze of their skin and in
wrinkles that laughed at the wind. In these sinewy, toughened
bodies there was a grim strength that appeared to know neither ache nor
fatigue nor satiety.

High, clear, strong, came their voices. The tones were the tones that
come from deep chests, and with a prolonged, sustained capacity for
enduring the toil of men. But the high-pitched laughter proved them
women, as did their loud and unceasing gossip. The battle of the voices
rose above the swash of the waves, above, also, another sound, as
incessant as the women's chatter and the swish of the water as it
hissed along the mud-flat's edges.

[Illustration: A SALE OF MUSSELS--VILLERVILLE]

This was the swift, sharp, saw-like cutting among the stones and the
slime, the scrape, scrape of the hundred of knives into the moist
earth. This ceaseless scraping, lunging, digging, made a new world of
sound--strange, sinister, uncanny. It was neither of the sea nor yet of
the land--it was a noise that seemed inseparable from this tongue of