Before I came away that afternoon the fishing nets were being hung up to dry, and, as we went along, we could see groups of men and women cleaning, sorting, and chopping oysters, and placing them in the characteristic shallow baskets that one sees all over the Landes, and some, on other trestles, were packing them up for transport. One woman near by was loading a cart with manure, while her companion--one of that half of mankind which possesses the most rights, but does not always (in France) do the most work--was calmly watching the process, without attempting to help! It is true that, in their dress, there was not much to distinguish the one sex from the other, as most of the women wore brilliant blue, or red, knickerbockers, no skirt, and coats, aprons, and big sabots. Some of the latter had very striking faces, though weather-beaten. Anything like the vivid contrast afforded by the arresting colours of their knickerbockers, backed by the cold, even grey of the huts, against which the _parcheuses_ were standing, as they worked, it would be difficult to imagine. I believe at La Hume, the adjoining village to Gujan-Mestras, which appeared to be dedicated to the goddess of laundry work, even as this place was dedicated to pisciculture, the women go about in the same gaudy leg gear, but I only saw it from the train, as we had not time to make an expedition to the spot. As we were coming back to the train we came upon a line of bare tables and chairs, looking empty, forlorn, and forsaken (the rain had apparently driven the oyster workers to the shelter of the huts) beside the _plage_. Somehow they suggested to me an empty bandstand, and indeed the _parcheurs_ and _parcheuses_ are the factors of the entire local "music" of the place. Without them it were absolutely characterless--devoid of life and meaning. Illustration: GUJAN-MESTRAS, NEAR ARCACHON. [_Page 68._ At the station a number of _parcheuses_ were waiting. Suddenly, without any note of warning, a sudden storm of discussion, heated and menacing, swept the humble, bare little waiting-room. It arose with simply a puff of conversation, but it spread in a moment to thunder clouds of invective, gesticulations of threatening import, lightning flashes of anger from eyes that, only an instant previously, had been bathed in the depths of phlegm. It seemed to be concerned (as usual!) with a matter affecting both sexes, for the _facteur_, and a young man who accompanied him, kept suddenly turning round on the women, and literally flinging impulsive shafts of fiery retort, beginning with, "_Pourquoi? Vous êtes vous-même_," etc., etc. The dispute raged with terrific force for a few minutes, then it was suddenly spent, and, as unexpectedly as it had begun, it fell away into a complete silence. CHAPTER V