--"I mean, my poor wife, just what I have seen! The _Thetis's_ long-boat has landed her hospital-mates and doctors, with eight sick men; not one of whom will ever touch the main-land again." --"Holy Virgin! what is it?" --"The yellow fever!" II. For him who dwells in-land, the yellow fever is but a disease similar to a thousand others, of which he knows nothing save the name. Family tradition and personal experience can attach to it, for him, neither terror or regret. But amongst our maritime population, the word sounds like a knell; not only bringing to mind a risk to be encountered, but reviving affliction, of recent or of ancient date. There, where every family has one at least of its loved members absent in foreign countries, the terrible scourge is all too well identified with the number of widows and orphans that it has made. It ranks with the storm and the reef of rocks, as a deadly foe. Its name, let fall, produces the same effect as the wind that whistles, or the surf that roars. Looks are interchanged on hearing it; and thought recurs to the absent, if not to the dead. Ropars, on this occasion, dwelt mainly on those about him; and in truth, no one could have better right than he to be ill at ease. Thrown in former days upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic, he had seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around him, and had himself barely escaped, as if by miracle. The remembrance of that butchery, as he termed it, was too vivid, and he had too often described it to Geneviève, for their firmness not now to be shaken. They troubled not themselves on their own account, but on account of those whose existence was so dear to them. Mathieu's first thought was of his wife and of his children; the first impulse of Geneviève was to fold them in her arms, and to declare that they must all go away. Some trouble had the old sailor in making her comprehend that, even if retreating were not dishonorable for him, it had become impossible. The long-boat had made sail for the frigate, and the yellow flag was hoisted at the lazaretto. Quarantine had begun for all who happened to be at Trébéron. Not a soul could henceforth pass beyond its limits: and Ropars pointed out to Geneviève the gun-boat sent by the health officer, which had been brought to bear at half cable's-length distance from the island, and cut off from it all intercourse by boats. They were in fact definitively penned in with the epidemic, and condemned to run its risk to the end.