The watchman on the cape of L’Aigle was attentively examining all the points of the horizon, with the aid of a Galileo spy-glass, at that time known by the name of long-view. The setting sun pierced the thick curtain of clouds, and with its last rays gilded the red trunk of the tall pine, the rough ridges of the little cabin walls, and the corners of the brown rock upon which the watchman was leaning. The calm, intelligent face of this man was now lighted with intense interest. His complexion, burned by the wind and tanned by the sun, was the colour of brick, and here and there showed deep wrinkles. The hood of his long-sleeved mantle, hiding his white hair, shaded his black eyes and eyebrows; his long, gray moustache fell considerably below his lower lip, where it mingled with a heavy beard, which covered the whole of his chin. A red and green woollen girdle fastened his sailor trousers around his hips; straps supported his leather gaiters above his knees; a bag of richly embroidered stuff, hanging from his belt by the side of a long knife in its sheath, contained his tobacco, while his cachim-babaou, or long Turkish pipe with an earthen bowl, lay against the outer wall of his cabin. For ten years Bernard Peyrou had been watchman on the cape of L’Aigle. He had recently been elected assignee of the overseer fishers of La Ciotat, who held their session every Sunday when there was matter for consideration. The watchman had served as patron seaman on the galleys of Malta for more than twenty years, never in all his navigations having left the Commander Pierre des Anbiez, of the venerable nation of Provence, and brother of Raimond V., Baron des Anbiez, who lived on the coast in the fortified house of which we have spoken. On each of these voyages to France the commander never failed to visit the watchman. Their interviews lasted a long time, and it was observed that the habitual melancholy of the commander increased after these conversations. Peyrou, a lifelong sufferer from serious wounds, and unfit for active service on the sea, had been, at the recommendation of his old captain, chosen watchman by the council of the town of La Ciotat. When on Sunday he presided at the consultation of the overseers, an experienced sailor supplied his place at the sentry-box. Naturally endowed with a sense of right and justice, and living ten years in solitude, between the sky and the sea, Peyrou had added much to his intelligence by meditation. Already possessing the nautical and astronomical knowledge necessary to an officer on a galley of the seventeenth century, he continued to learn by a constant study of the great phenomena of nature always before his eyes. Thanks to his experience, and his habit of comparing cause and effect, no one knew better than himself how to predict the beginning, the duration, and the end of the storms which prevailed on the coast.