Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron--heaved up one bristling, foaming sea, which caught the _Sainte Vierge_ upon its crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast. The next instant the _Sainte Vierge_ was borne over and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks. The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of Arcachon. The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he put his neighbour into the stocks)--"only with a view towards improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux, and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it, stayed out a night.