There was no thought now for the fishing, but only for the management of the boats. The lines had been hauled in long before. All were hurrying to get away, some to seek a shelter in the fiords, striving to arrive in time; others, preparing to pass the southern point of Iceland, deeming it the safer course to take to the open sea and have free space in which to sail before the wind. They still saw one another a little; here and there, in the hollows of the waves, sails rose up, poor little things, wet, weary, fugitive--but keeping upright nevertheless, like those children’s toys of pith of elder-wood which one may lay flat by blowing on them, but which always raise themselves again. The great shag of clouds which had condensed on the western horizon with the aspect of an island began to break up at the top and the tatters coursed across the sky. It seemed inexhaustible, this shag: the wind stretched it, extended it, unravelled it, making issue from it an indefinite succession of dark curtains, which it outspread over the clear yellow sky, become now livid in its cold depths. And still the wind increased, agitating everything. The cruiser had made off towards the shelters of Iceland, the fishermen remained alone on this agitated sea, which now had an angry air and a dreadful colour. They made haste in their preparation for foul weather. The distance between them increased. Soon they were lost from sight of one another. The waves, curling in volutes, continued to chase one another, to unite, to join forces in order to become still higher, and, between them, the hollows deepened. In a few hours all was ploughed up, convulsed in this region which on the preceding evening had been so calm, and, in place of the silence of before, one was deafened with noise. Very quickly the scene had changed and all now was agitation, unconscious, useless. What was the object of it all?... What a mystery of blind destruction!... The clouds were completing their unfolding, coming always from the west, overlaying one another, hurrying, swift, obscuring everything. There remained now only a few yellow openings, by which the sun sent down its last rays in sheaves. And the water, greenish now, was veined more and more with white slaver. By midday, the _Marie_ had assumed completely her foul-weather trim; with closed hatches and reefed sails, she bounded supple and light; amid the disorder that was commencing she had the air of playing as play the porpoises whom storms amuse. With only her foresail spread, she ran before the wind, according to the nautical expression which describes this particular trim.