fellow who, up to the time he was compelled to enter the army, had
spent his life in dragging heavy nets over the sides of a boat. He knew
the Brittany coast, rugged and indented as it is, as well as he knew
the road from the little café on the square to the dwelling of his
father on the hillside overlooking the sea. Never before had he been
out of sound of the waves. He was a man who, like Hervé Riel, might
have saved the fleet, but France, with the usual good sense of
officialism, sent this man of the coast into the mountains, and Jean
Rasteaux became a soldier in the Alpine Corps. If he stood on the
highest mountain peak, Jean might look over illimitable wastes of snow,
but he could catch neither sound nor sight of the sea.

Men who mix with mountains become as rough and rugged as the rocks, and
the Alpine Corps was a wild body, harsh and brutal. Punishment in the
ranks was swift and terrible, for the corps was situated far from any
of the civilising things of modern life, and deeds were done which the
world knew not of; deeds which would not have been approved if reported
at headquarters.

The regiment of which Jean became a unit was stationed in a high valley
that had but one outlet, a wild pass down which a mountain river roared
and foamed and tossed. The narrow path by the side of this stream was
the only way out of or into the valley, for all around, the little
plateau was walled in by immense peaks of everlasting snow, dazzling in
the sunlight, and luminous even in the still, dark nights. From the
peaks to the south, Italy might have been seen, but no man had ever
dared to climb any of them. The angry little river was fed from a
glacier whose blue breast lay sparkling in the sunshine to the south,
and the stream circumnavigated the enclosed plateau, as if trying to
find an outlet for its tossing waters.