The men of the trident have sports which are handed down to them from their ancestors: when you cross the Line, you must make up your mind to receive "baptism;" the same ceremony occurs beneath the Tropics, the same ceremony on the bank of Newfoundland, and whatever the spot, the leader of the masquerade is always "the Old Man of the Tropics." To the sailors, tropical and hydropical are interchangeable terms: the Old Man of the Tropics therefore has an enormous paunch; he is dressed, even when beneath his native Tropics, in all the sheepskins and all the furred jackets that the crew can supply. He sits squatting in the main-top and roaring from time to time. Every one looks at him from below: he begins to climb down the shrouds, moving heavily like a bear, and stumbling like Silenus. As he sets foot on deck, he utters fresh roars, gives a bound, seizes a pail, fills it with sea-water, and empties it over the chief of those who have not crossed the Equator or who have not reached the line of ice. You fly beneath the decks, you spring upon the hatches, you clamber up the masts: Old Father Tropics is after you; all this ends in a generous gift of drink-money: games of Amphitrite which Homer would have celebrated, even as he sang Proteus, if old Oceanus had been known in his entirety in the time of Ulysses; but, in those days, only his head was visible at the Pillars of Hercules: his body lay hidden and covered the world. We steered for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, in search of a new port. When we came in sight of the former, one morning between ten and twelve o'clock, we were almost upon it; its coast showed like a black hump through the fog. We anchored in front of the capital of the island: we could not see it, but we heard the sounds on land. The passengers hastened to disembark; the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, who had been constantly racked with sea-sickness, was so weak that he had to be carried on shore. I took a separate lodging; I waited until a gust of wind tore the mist asunder and showed me the place in which I was living and, so to speak, the faces of my hosts in this land of shadows. [Sidenote: The Isle of Saint-Pierre.] The port and roadstead of Saint-Pierre are situated between the east coast of the island and a long-shaped islet called the _Île aux Chiens_, or Isle of Dogs. The port, known as the _Barachois_, or Little Inlet, cuts into the land and ends in a brackish pool. Small, barren mountains crowd together in the centre of the island; some are detached and overhang the coast; others have at their feet a skirt of flat and turfy moorland. The look-out hill is visible from the market-town. The Governor's house faces the wharf. The church, the vicarage, the provision warehouse are situated at the same spot; next come the houses of the naval commissary and the harbour-master. From there, the one street of the town runs over the shingles along the beach.