It began in the Clos-Poulet, it may be said to have ended in the Pacific—and yet I think that its true ending is at home where long ago it began; for it is written in grey, the colour of Brittany skies, the colour of tears—there is no heat or brilliance in it as of southern seas. Surely here or there, this is a breton tale, strayed but returning home at last; so that the record of it has to be pieced together, as it were, on two sides of the world.

It is not difficult to picture the beginning, though Clémentine will tell little of that. But there was a day some fifty odd years ago when there lay in the bay of St. Malo a little ship straining at her cables and shaking out her sails to catch the wind; a ship home-built and home-manned, launched in the harbour yonder and christened, like so many of her crew, by the curé from the grey cathedral that lifts its single spire above the close-walled little city. It is easy to picture her, to know her very make and shape and rig; for year by year her sister goélettes are still built and equipped and sent out from St. Malo to the Iceland and Newfoundland fishings. Year by year in the first days of spring they steal out into the bay from the harbour where they have lain during the winter; year by year they pass out, unchanging, familiar, with the same lines of paint fresh on graceful sides, the same gilding at the bow, the same well-remembered Marie-Joseph, it may be, or the Sainte-Anne, or the Etoile-de-Mer.