I can still see the two of them sitting there before me, sharing the same chair on account of the limited space of the room, holding on with one hand in the habit learnt from the rolling of the ship, and looking at me with attentive eyes. For I was endeavouring to prove to them on this evening that _it was not with men as with beasts_, and to speak to them of the mysterious _beyond_. . . . And they, with Barazère's death fresh in their memory, were listening to me surprised, fascinated, in the midst of that very special peacefulness of calm evenings at sea, a peacefulness which predisposes to the comprehension of the incomprehensible. Old arguments repeated over and over again at school which I developed to them and which it seemed to me might still make an impression on their young minds. . . . It was perhaps very stupid, this discourse on immortality; but it did them no harm; on the contrary. CHAPTER XCII These seas in which the _Primauguet_ was were almost always of the same lapis blue; it was the region of the trade winds and of fine weather without an end. Sometimes, in our passage from one group of islands to another, we had to cross the Equator, to pass through the motionless immensities and mournful splendours. And afterwards, when, in one hemisphere or the other, we ran into the life-giving trade wind again, when the awakened _Primauguet_ began once more to gather speed, then one realized better, by contrast, the charm of moving quickly, the charm of being on this great, inclined, quivering thing which seemed to be alive, and which obeyed you, alert and supple, as it sped onwards. When we sailed eastward in these regions of the trade winds, we sailed close to the wind; and then the _Primauguet_ rushed upon the regular, crisped waves of the tropics for whole days, without ever getting tired, with little joyous flutterings such as sportive fishes might have. Afterwards, when we returned on our course, with the wind behind us, fully rigged, every inch of our white canvas spread, our progress, rapid as it was, became so easy, so effortless, that we no longer felt that we were moving; we were lifted up as it were in a kind of flight and our movement was like the soaring of a bird. As far as the sailors were concerned one day was very much like another.